A smiling Kalki Koechlin and Juhi Pande, with black eyes and red slashes across their faces, reassured us that women are responsible for rape in It’s Your Fault . Beauty of Red , an animation video spoke of how red turned from colour of innocence into a hue of shame. 2013 showed us that public service messages don’t have to be dull. They used creativity, humour, music and skilled film making to shock, appeal and be informative at the same time.
It’s Your Fault , a three-and-a-half minute video created by Rohan Joshi, Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba and Ashish Shakya of comedy collective All India Bakchod (AIB), became a rage online. The two-and-a-half minute Beauty of Red was hosted on by Menstrupedia.com and was shot by mypromovideos, an animation group based out of Coimbatore. It spoke of the taboos over menstruation.
World over, many social message videos went viral.
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Everyone loves pretty air hostesses and dashing flight stewards, but not their boring instructions. What if they all broke into a dance and sang all that to you?
Among message-driven films, Werner Herzog’s From One Second To The Next , takes the cake. The video, which garnered over a million views in one week, begins with the shot of a hand reaching out, and a sister saying: “I had my brother in my hand and, all of a sudden, my hand was empty”. Talking about the danger of texting while driving, the documentary recorded first-person accounts of those who caused accidents. Master filmmaker Herzog blends dream and reality so beautifully, you can’t hold back tears.
Even after the furore over the Delhi gang rape case, violence against women continues unabated. Anurag Kashyap’s
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But, Bollywood’s badshahs continue to push their films into 100- and 200-crore clubs, through sheer hype. This year comes to an end with AIB’s rightful plea to ‘Grumpy ol Bollywood’. A tongue-in-cheek response to YashRaj Film’s rejection of their spoof on Dhoom 3 , the video that went viral is loaded with sharp sarcasm. Groove with them as the high school boy band lookalikes hum: ‘Paisa Papapapa Paisa…Bollywood Tum Paisa Leke Udao’ and end this year with a smile and prayer that 2014 will gift us better films.