Movie Murmur

Cameraman Narayanan Venkataraman watching a projection in Mumbai It was clear during the very conception of the film 'Haal-e-Kangaal' (The Bankrupts) that it would be difficult to find a conventional release for it. Despite this, the small crew that the film had, did get enrolled into the making of this film. They found it worth giving their time and effort for the film and I am thankful for them.  We shot the film in 2013, had a rough cut in 2013 itself. I then met a producer who had once asked me to come to him, if I had an edit in hand. It would be easier to for him to 'pick' the film because half the work was already done. He met me, heard me patiently and told me that he would be needing a minimum of 25 lakhs of rupees to be put into publicity and marketing for any film to have a conventional release, however limited it maybe. 'If I had that kind of money, I would put it into real estate', he added. Very logical. He already had two such ...

The Bankrupts (Haal-e-Kangaal) V N Lakshminarayana, Critic, Mysore It was a fruitful experience to watch 'The Bankrupts' at Mysuru and again In Bengaluru. 'The Bankrupts' is a high profile movie packed with the dialectics of form and content, image and sound, verbal and the nonverbal expression, truth and falsehood, bluff and imagination, gender and human relationships, capital and cinematic art- and finally the ideology in the era of postmodernism that is embedded in the very fabric of social life of the people at large. An undercurrent of sadness born out of systemic deprivation of existential opportunities to realize one's talents adds to the absurdity of the entangled life situation the two artiste friends are placed in, gives the movie a tint of comedy too. The minimalistic approach adopted in creating the entire movie is not only novel but also path breaking in the production of Indian films. Rajiv Kumar, Film maker, Delhi 'Th...