Wednesday, February 25, 2009
CHAI PANI ETC DVD COMING IN MARCH
The DVD of Manu Rewal's award winning satire on contemporary India, Chai Pani etc (Love Bribes etc) will be at last released in March 2009. If you are interested in buying the dvd register yourselves at the website www.chaipanietc.com. Apart from the film itself, the dvd also has interviews with Manu Rewal, Konkona Sen, Zafar Karachiwala and Gaurav Kapur. And as a special bonus it also contains Manu Rewal's short comedy Hollywood ki Pukar (the call of hollywood) which was screened in the "Global eyes" section of the Director's fortnight section in Cannes 2002.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
CHAI PANI ETC GOES WHERE SLUMDOG DOESN'T
There is probably a reason why "Chai Pani etc" had to face 7 months of censorship before it could be released in India, while "Slumdog Millionaire" hasn't faced any such issue in India.
In "Chai Pani etc", the dirt and poverty of the children isn't "milked" for its emotional power, but is framed in a particular setting (the images of poor rag pickers are seen in TV bureaucrat's office), in order to show, how a byzantine bureaucracy's refusal to allow the showing of the plight of poor children in slums on indian televesion, is linked to a much wider "culture of corruption", sloth and denial. Unlike "Slumdog" which thoroughly discredits whatever pretense it may have had regarding its relevance to the real world, because of its unlikely and predictable "fairy tale" second half, Chai Pani etc follows through, in a comic satirical tone, to the very end without blinking, by linking the low level bureaucrat's chai pani (bribe and nepotism) to that of the political system.
In "Chai Pani etc", the dirt and poverty of the children isn't "milked" for its emotional power, but is framed in a particular setting (the images of poor rag pickers are seen in TV bureaucrat's office), in order to show, how a byzantine bureaucracy's refusal to allow the showing of the plight of poor children in slums on indian televesion, is linked to a much wider "culture of corruption", sloth and denial. Unlike "Slumdog" which thoroughly discredits whatever pretense it may have had regarding its relevance to the real world, because of its unlikely and predictable "fairy tale" second half, Chai Pani etc follows through, in a comic satirical tone, to the very end without blinking, by linking the low level bureaucrat's chai pani (bribe and nepotism) to that of the political system.
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