Rahim Murge Pe Mat Ro
PrintiView Author: Devashish Makhija (Mumbai, India)
Email: withheld
Rahim Murge Pe Mat Ro
First up, to get the introductions out of the way… I assisted Anurag on ‘Black Friday’ and Shaad on ‘Bunty aur Babli’ and then I quickly tucked my ‘A.D.’ tail between my quivering legs and took up the pen. I’ve been writing films for the last three years. ‘Fireflies’ for Sabal Shekhawat, ‘Bhoomi’ for Abhik Mukhopadhyay and a bunch of others, unfinished, unnamed, unknown, like all writers in the industry inevitably end up doing. In between, Rajat Nagpal, one of the instigators in my life-altering decision to quit Calcutta for Bombay, and I would jog out with a camera once in a while to make experimental short films.
In the middle of this year I had only just finished preparations for my first art show ‘occupying silence’ for Gallery Kanishka’s in Calcutta (http://www.gallerykanishkas.com/exhibits/silence/1.html). Ping-ponging between that, directing my animation feature for YRF and a couple of other film-writing assignments, I started getting blind-spots in my awareness once in a while. Blind spots where, bored of being the person I was, doing the things I was doing, I started imagining points of views of all the other people / creatures / things around me. Rajat, my first and only film-collaborator on all things warped, was having a similar limbo-phase. I threw the idea at him… of shifting perspectives / points-of-view through a series of short films. Shifts that would radically alter the perception and understanding of a cliché / norm / ritual / things we come to take for granted.
Over a bunch of humid, tormented afternoons, we figured the first three such experiments we wanted to try. And it occurred to me that this body of work would also make for an interesting video follow up to a predominantly ‘canvas’ first art show. So the stage set, we rolled out three films. But it was a fourth that we randomly squeezed in in between schedules, that didn’t even take us long to shoot or edit, that suddenly started seeming like the proverbial ‘lambi race ka ghoda’. It was a happy accident, made to happen, we believe, by the departed spirit of the halaal-ed Rahim Murga. He watched us shoot him. And he heard our intentions. We meant him no harm. But we did, in a twisted way, sensationalise his death, and with it his life. So we’ve said umpteen prayers for his soul. But it seems like he liked being immortalised after all.
Because now the film ‘Rahim Murge Pe Mat Ro’ (yes, yes, the title is my not-so-subtle tribute to ‘Salim Langda’) is amongst the handful short-listed from 2500 films at the Filminute International Festival. And has made it to the top five lists of all the festival’s affiliates, including ‘Wired’ magazine. Check it out at… http://www.filminute.com/2008/screeningroom/index.php?id=21
And the reviews at… http://www.eyeweekly.com/filminute and http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/09/review-one-minu.html
The experiments continue in the meantime. The grammar, the narrative support structure, and the elasticity of a short film (especially of a few minutes at most) is so different from that of a feature film that it becomes a completely different form of self expression. Both mediums excite different parts of the mind. There is an immediate involvement in a short that a feature cannot or should not accomplish. On the other hand a feature has the width and depth of participation that a short can only dream of. So there’s magic to be had from both. But that’s my understanding alone. I could be way out of my depth in the matter. Though the occasional celestial squawk from our friend Rahim up above makes every such short venture worth it.
- devashish makhija
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Rahul Dholakia
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Varma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Sachin Kundalkar
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Is that Piyush Mishra’s voice ?
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WOW! Compelling and gripping,
Loved it.
Best of luck.
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I am speechless. Trying my best to articulate the sudden assault. The last line haunts you long after the silence post the film fills the space – even that silence is very much an integral part of your cinematic frame.
The introspection runs in different directions, the impact is elusive with a sweet and subtle “to each his own” comprehension challenge .Didn’t like the “ghanta” though…seemed a little out of place or so I thought!
Wishing you every success and many more humid, tormented afternoons and afterthoughts……
Warm regards
Sudhir
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Brilliant.
Loved it.
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devashish welcome to pfc,
as i said before, rahim murga was brilliant, thought provoking and may i say inspiring for certain reasons.
wish you the best man!!
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pratik, yes thats piyush bhai’s voice. he infused unbelievable life into that cock!
dev (my namesake!) and deep blue, thanks so much
sudhir, thanks, you could be right about that ‘ghanta’, some other things too that irk rajat and me now, but seemed to fit when we made the film. guess thats something we always have to live with, the regret of what else could have been. or we could take a leaf from rahim’s book of philosophies, and grin and bear it.
rusted rick, inspiring for certain reasons is right, thank you. everyone takes different things out from this film. some think its a PETA platform. we didnt intend it. but what the hell, whatever works for you. if its out there, its yours however you want it to be. rahim clucks in agreement i suppose
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yeah the voice is indeed piyush mishra
.. very cool short . i can only wow ..are ur other shorts online?
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nope. not yet though.
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hi piyush bhai ……..pl comment on how useful to assist somebody for a while and is that prove useful for you also…..???????????
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hi munis
very valid observations. and you’re right, this film was not made to convert anyone to vegetarianism. it was just an exercise in flipping a perception of a cliche. in that we stayed as true as we could to the milieu, background and everyday realities of our hero. if it did cause any such doubt or offense, it was not meant to. we are not interested in taking a religious / social / political stance. we are only interested in understanding the ‘murga’.
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hey Devashish!
Really liked ur film…
One reallyy good thing is ke u and ur associates…kisine ‘load’ nahin liya…& kept it very simple!
more power to ya!!
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nahin, humne ‘load’ nahin liya. thank you for noting, really. we just went and made it ‘be-dhadak’!
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Hi dev
my name is chanakya and i saw the short feature rahim murge pe mat ro.. and the best part i felt was the way the voice over and camera synchronization takes place..good one..i loved it..all the best for bhoomi…
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wow! was hearing about the comparisons between this years PFCOne winner ‘Senses of an Incense’ and ‘Rahim Murge Pe Mat Ro’, and was intrigued to watch this. i have to say this again. wow!
while i didnt like ’senses…’, i was bowled over by this. ’senses…’ tried to cram too much in that one minute and this one was so simple, so lovely. hats off.
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