Shell Colony Road

 

Kamgar Nagar + Shell Colony Road

Friday movies at a video theater in Kamgar Nagar, Kurla (E)


Leave Your Brains At Home 

They ask us to keep our brains at home before we come and see their movies so that they can stuff the empty space between our ears with their broken dreams through our eyes, ears, nose and throat. The broken dreams of the brilliant minds that come to the make belief world of Bollywood, from all over the world, to sacrifice their stories, dreams and everything they have learnt, at the box office and churn out exactly the same kind of films that they came to change in the first place. The saddest are the ones who have only grown up on a steady dose of movies that have only succeeded in killing whatever tradition of storytelling that we have evolved over centuries, one movie at a time.

They ask us to keep our brains at home before we come and see their movies. But we no longer have brains to keep safe and secure at home because they invade our homes too. The ones who could not have stories made into feature length movies write loudness that fills a million flickering TV screens. Their writing is powerful. It has numbed all our motor skills and especially that part of our brain that controls the finger we use to change channels. I think the saddest ones of them all on television are the one stand in front of stories and kill them with their screaming report on location, on our news channel. Then, there are those who write television commercials.

They ask us to keep our brains at home before we come and see their movies. But the brain we have left at home no longer knows the good from the bad and the bad from the beautiful. The brains left at home is a dust fairy of tangled thoughts and distractions floating around in the vibrations caused by the loudness of the voices, images and radio waves trying to lure us to empty our brains and feed the addiction we have developed for the next item number, item girl and the advertising messages of the products that require the faces of the people who reside in the empty space between our ears to form a connection.

They ask us to keep our brains at home before we come and see their movies even though they know that we do not have brains, we do not have elephant memories and like common thieves they are capable only of creating a momentary distraction that gives them a moment to empty our purse. And before somebody else like them will lure us away with an even cheaper trick. 

Shows and timings. For some reason, all the posters are next to poster announcing alcohol deaddiction centres.

Shell Colony Road, Chembur

Videokaaran Sagai and Director Jagannathan Krishnan

Videokaaran Review.

And extra shots from a Tehelka interview with Jagannathan Krishnan, director of Videokaaran.

I finally got to see the Videokaaran documentary by Jaganathan Krishnan in the very room where a good portion of the film was shot: In Sagai, the Videokaaran’s room, in a roof top room in a slum off Shell Colony Road.



The trailer of the documentary sets the tone for the movie. It’s supposed to shock a country that is dishonest when it talks or portrays sex thanks to a very funny big brother censor system meant to shepherd the largest population of illiterates and semi-literates in the world. However, the content of the movie is much much more and far deeper than the trailer suggests.

The documentary is basically the story of Sagai but it’s also the story of the how a majority of Mumbaikars live. The documentary peels layers of a section of the city like an onion.

Sagai used to run a flourishing video theatre in a slum which played all kinds of action movies in Hindi, Tamil, Chinese and Thai. He used to edit his films to make them short and action packed. If the movie was boring, he used to insert porn clips to make the Rs.10 tickets worthwhile. As expected, police raids were common and that’s the criminal mind that he refers to in the trailer.

He was always one step ahead of the cops when it came to the illegal video movie business.

However, it all ended with a demolition that is very beautifully captured by Sagai with a video camera and used in the Documentary. The walls of the video hall were the thickest in the slum. The bull dozer slams the walls again and again and the wall stays.... it’s poetic.

The day before the video hall was destroyed, Sagai showed Rajnikanth movies all day long for free.









The documentary is the story of the fans’ mind. Sagai adores Rajnikanth. He’s the extreme maximum Rajni fan. Through his devotion and a friend who is a Amitabh fan, the director probes deep into the minds of Indian movie fanatics. Slowly he probes around their lives and philosophies, the thoughts and the environment in which these fans live and think. The documentary becomes a study of the space, the living and working space of the maximum fans, their friends, families and the city that produce them. It's the story of the living space that manufactures them. It's the story of Mumbai.







The real genius in the film is the editing and the way the music is put together. You become a part of the lives of the extremely like-able Videokaaran and friends. Yes, like-able. It also makes you think about your relationship with your favourite movies and the city you live in. There are some brilliant pauses throughout the film which are designed to make you think about what you just saw. And there are clips and music from Tamil and Hindi movies that pace the documentary well.

It’s a must watch if you love Mumbai. To get your personal copy, contact Jagan at jagannathan.krishnan@gmail.com