Indian flavour at IFFI competitive section

NEW DELHI: Chandni Bar, Swaraj and Mitr-My Friend are three Indian films competing for the Golden and Silver Peacock Awards in the Competition Section which includes several Asian films. All the three films are directorial debuts by the filmmakers: Madhur Bhandarkar, Anwar Jamal and Revathy.
Bhandarkar owes his lineage to Bollywood and shares the honour of chartering a new course for Mumbai’s mainstream film industry — an honour shared with Farhan Akhtar.Revathy and Jamal are from a different stock.
Jamal has learnt his craft from the short film movement and Revathy has comfortably straddled sundry worlds: art, mainstream and Mumbai kitsch too.
For Bhandarkar, the success of Chandni Bar was totally unexpected. ‘‘It began as a very small film. Going by the title, many people thought the film would be a sleazy one. But today, it has not only found an audience, but is also part of the festival circuit,’’ says Bhandarkar.
The film, which is a product of ‘‘intense research’’ based on ‘‘‘prolonged interviews’’ with Mumbai’s bar girls, has managed to find another audience too.
‘‘The VCD of Chandni Bar can be found in the home of every bar girl in Mumbai. It has become their Bible. They see the film whenever they are too depressed and begin their life with renewed grit,’’ says the filmmaker. Today, Bhandarkar is hot property in Bollywood and has already completed Satta with Raveena Tandon in the lead. With Police Officer, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar, he is all set to enter the big league.
For Revathy, Mitr - My Friend opened up a whole new vista. She screened her film in several universities in the US and was surprised to find it struck a chord ‘‘not only amongst the Indian students but among others as well’’.
The response in India too has been heartening and the filmmaker says she has been flooded with e-mails from viewers who say they identify ‘‘either with the dilemma of the father, mother or daughter’’.
The response from the Indian diaspora was not encouraging. ‘‘But that’s because the Indian community in US likes to see only Hindi blockbusters or Hollywood films,’’ says Revathy.
Today, she focusses on her directorial ventures since she feel the ‘‘Indian cinema doesn’t offer much to a middle-aged woman in terms of roles’’.
Jamal’s Swaraj is an ode to the grit and the courage of four women who set out on an arduous tasks.
Having discovered a well on their arid land, they set out on a journey to seek the government’s help in changing their destiny.
Needless to say, it’s a journey against the odds -against vested interests, the male bastion, bureaucratic red-tape and corrosive corruption.