4 Quick Ones: Short Films about AIDS
Before we sink our teeth into the film bit, I have to mention this pleasant surprise I had yesterday. I was in Bhubhaneswar for an open quiz along with a couple of my friends…. the quiz was really exciting, and after a nail-biting tie-breaker with a team from Infosys, we won….but it got better. The mild-mannered, soft spoken guy in glasses sitting at the table next to mine introduced himself as PFC’s very own Ratnakar Sadasyula, whose wonderful posts on Burton and others we have all enjoyed… the old “small-world” cliche was on display firmly. It’s a strange and wonderful feeling to see in flesh and blood someone who knows you only through the light-years distant medium of cyberspace….
As part of Bill Gates Foundation’s effort to raise awareness about AIDS, these four 15-minute films were produced by Mira Nair, and directed by four ace directors, Vishal Bharadwaj, Nair herself, Farhan Akhtar and Santosh Sivan. With an assembly line of A-list actors like Pankaj Kapur, Shiney Ahuja, Irrfan Khan, Shabana Azmi, Boman Irani and others, I was pretty excited about the films, perhaps more so because short films are something I have woken up to relatively recently; with films like Tim Burton’s macabre “Vincent”, Jim Jarmusch’s ensemble piece “Coffee and Cigarettes” and closer to home, Ashwin Kumar’s Oscar nominated effort “The Little Terrorist”. Perhaps I’ll talk more about them in another post.
Vishal Bharadwaj’s “Blood Brothers” was the first one among the four I saw. It was also, perhaps the most impressive among the lot. Centring on the story of a yuppie(Siddhartha Suryanarayan, known primarily in Bollywood for RDB) who is mistakenly declared HIV positive after an identity crisis. The brooding, intensely painful period where an infected person fears humiliation above all is captured beautifully. I have always likened Bharadwaj to be the archetypical poet-director. He paints images so compelling in their starkness that they stay with you long after the last shot has flashed before your eyes…. he is helped out here by solid performances by Siddhartha, Pawan Malhotra, and a delightful cameo by his favourite Pankaj Kapur. The film also boasts of virtuoso cinematography by Guillermo Navarro, who won an Academy Award for his work on Pan’s Labyrinth(which happens to be one of my all-time faves!).
Farhan Akhtar displays some finely nuanced touches in the heart-warming “Positive”, which is perhaps the most offbeat of the four on display.
This one shows how the dreaded disease actually helped a father and son to bond and heal a fractured family. Boman Irani delivers a knockout performance(again!) as the disabled father, while Arjun Mathur(who, interestingly, is in two of the four films, this as well as Nair’s “Migration”)
is believable as the sullen son, who thinks his father is to blame for their troubles. When I saw this film, I was reminded of the poignant, all-too fleeting hospital scenes in Akhtar’s brilliant debut film “Dil Chahta Hai” , it’s almost as if he has realised there’s more mileage to be gained from those scenes…
Santosh Sivan’s “Prarambha” is in Tamil and stars Prabhu Deva. He plays a truck driver with a heart of gold who fights for the rights of an HIV-positive child. The film raises several telling points, but is a bit high on the cliche-meter. With his trademark antics, Prabhu Deva does manage toraise laughs without trivializing the issues. The child actor is a revelation, and Sivan handles the material sensitively, if not always satisfyingly.
Which brings us to Mira Nair’s own effort “Migration” which is top-heavy with actors; Irrfan Khan, Shiney Ahuja, Sameera Reddy, Raima Sen as well as a side-splitting act by Vijay Raaz. Perhaps the one with the most wide-ranging concerns, the film lacks a knockout screenplay, but on the flip side, the high point is Irrfan’s act as a closet gay man who lacks the courage to tell his wife the truth about himself and his best friend. Shiney is hopelessly miscast as the poor labourer. He has muck-like black stuff generously pasted over his stubbled mug, and this is supposed to convince us that he is poor and illiterate and everything we love about filmy villagers.
But overall, the four films do a fab job of spreading awareness about AIDS and the numerous issues surrounding the aftermath of this disease. One hopes that more such collaborative efforts reach us in the days to come. I am now looking for more short films by directors like Scorsese, Benegal and Oliver Stone, to name a few. Please recommend me any short film you have enjoyed me in the past, and if possible give me a torrent/rapidshare link!
Tags: AIDS, Mira Nair, Movies
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Have seen both Blood Brothers and Farhan Akhthar’s Positive, though, Blood Brothers is definitely the most talked about, I , personally, liked Farhan’s positive more.
both vishal and farhan’s shorts are on youtube, surprisingly.. both very well done. prarambh is hosted right here on PFC, courtesy of santosh sivan..
http://passionforcinema.com/prarambh-aids-jaago-film/
Saw these sometime early this year at jaman.com : http://www.jaman.com/movie/Migration/0mPGmGr2oVoU/
We were also the part of the same quiz. remember the team which came 3rd.Surprising to know that ratnakar is so well known on the cyberworld and we dont even know about him. considering that we have participated in other quizzes its really a loss not to have interacted with him.
The short films were telecast by sony Ent Tv a few months back. must say they are short and very well made.
Yeah,you should check out Ratnakar’s posts on Tim Burton here on PFC……plenty of food for thought there! Or better still, check out some of the quizzes on his personal blog…
Now I simply have to return to Quizzotica every year!!!!
It was only a coincidence that what seemed to be a random order of viewing turned out actually to have an order to it .. from personal acceptance in Blood Brothers .. to family in Positive .. and the society in Prarambha .. my ranking wld progress in the same order i guess .. Prarambha being my personal favourite!
No comments about Mira Nair’s film! Only that it was the hardest to find or identify on YouTube
@ Amar
You watch Mira Nair’s film here: http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/broadband/video/Special-Features/qt16M539/3/Mira-Nair-s-Migration-On-AIDS.html