It was late august, when i was watching those weekly desi show clips of some seriously seedy clips of telugu movies..... I was thinking... "when would some originality free of filminess creep out from telugu land??" and there it was.. something about a indie movie called "vanaja" and a telugu one at that. The director was being interviewed and i thought "hey.. this seems different!"
Next thing i know..i was in a seedy theater in the NYU area off 12th street for the premiere of the movie....... Maybe it's because it was the last show that day.. there was no sign of a desi sign around except for a mush clad dude passing around fliers of the movie trying to interest the people in the line about it. we told him "dude... we are here to watch the movie... we heard about it".
Spectacular and original was the word. Ofcourse it was all in telugu with english sub titles. we two must have been the only gultis in the house, not to speak of desis being absent around.
Everything seemed real, the actors, the settings... it was wonderful. the story of a poor little girl, with high hopes, experiencing life with it's conundrums of life, birth, hope, and despair in a telangana village of older india.
The actors were very real. Fisherman seemed like fishermen, little village boys wore loin cloths, no one spoke out of place, and hey... no fancy sets! The characters were rich and original. Everyone acted, dressed, walked, and spoke as they should. Little surprise, considering that the director mentioned that he didn't really use actors but regular people who did things as they do every day.
We were awed with how the audience connected with some of the humor in the movie, considering that the movie watchers were all mostly caucasian. I guess language doesn't matter when it comes to conveying issues and humor at large. Some scenes hit the right strings.... and the crowd clapped and cheered as the show went on. The cinematography was textbooky, clear and real.
Now, how often do they have a Q and A session at the end of a movie, especially with the director and the lead actress showing up. I haven't been to any premiere's but this was my first one.
The director, rajnesh domalapalli really seemed down to earth, and ah... for a moment it felt refreshing to look at originality. No stock answers and No BS, he was getting quite carried away in a genuine way as he answered questions. It's interesting to note that this movie was his thesis for the degree he was persuing at columbia university. He spoke of short films that he used to take in india during vacations, and how they finally culminated in this movie.
Someone asked him if he's seen the Satyajitray's movie from 1958 called Jalsagar and he replied "yes, it's my favorite movie". It was a old white man who said that he's seen that movie in 1958. I'm sure the gentlemen was persuaded to come see this movie from his experience 50 years ago. Maybe he's looking at the next satyajit ray. If his thesis looks like this, imagine what a real work would look like?
I was going to ask something before the beautiful girl next to me stood up and asked "Why did vanaja decide to have the baby?" and that started a big explanation by rajnesh how he was inspired by the film called sophie's choice.
The lead actress, Mamata Bhukya seemed like a typical shy school girl. She seemed overwhelmed by the response and went about answering all questions in telugu. Ahh.. it felt so good to someone from telugu land break out of the norm and create something so original yet appealing to the world at large.
It's films like this that india needs to send to the oscars, not crap mash ups like "Lagaan".
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