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Austin South Asian | June 2015
‘Lakshmi’ Screening & Director Nagesh Kukunoor in Austin! By Birjis Adeni Rashed Photography by Animon Jose On May 14, 2015, we saw an extremely well made, disturbingly traumatic movie Lakshmi (2014 film) with director/writer/actor of this movie Nagesh Kukunoor in attendance. The movie presented by INDIE MEME was screened at the Southwest theatre in Austin. The event was partly sponsored by South Asia Institute, UT and Humanities Texas and supported by Safe Place, Children at Risk and the Institute of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. INDIE MEME has been bringing to viewers abroad, award-winning & compelling indie films and documentaries. The screening of Lakshmi was their effort to bring cinema with a social message and lead to dialogue, discussion and awareness. Disturbing, traumatic, inhumane, sensitive, graphic, realistic… many such words describe this movie Lakshmi. A story about child trafficking and prostitution and a portrait of a 14 year old
who after enduring the brutality of the societies underbelly, resiliently stands up to this ruthless exploitation and overcomes the perpetrators.
and heroism of characters like Lakshmi are applaudable to bring perpetrators of such exploitation to justice and give hope that this system of sex trafficking can stop.
The film based on true life story of 14 year old Lakshmi, chronicles her life from her childhood to getting sold by her family, her kidnapping, rape, prostitution, inhumane torture, her escapes and her captures, police indifference, and her unbroken spirit to stand up in court against her sex traffickers. The movie shows such realistic incidents and graphic details which makes you cringe and rattles you with sad and sordid realities. Yet the depiction of courage
Though the original story happened in a town in AndhraPradesh, this movie is set in Hyderabad, and weaves its cultural milieu with the locations, narrow lanes, language dialects of Hyderabadi Urdu and Telegu language mixed with vulgar and brazen language of the social strata of prostitutes and pimps. The story is served with true to life approach while exposing the compelling realities of many such women.
All performances were ‘phenomenal’ (quoted by Kukunoor ). The doe eyed Monali Thakur as ‘Lakshmi’, coerces our sympathies with her naivety, innocence, depiction of pain and display of resilience and strength. Actress Shefali Shah as ‘madam Jyoti’ with a painfully bold and sympathetic role carries out her acting exceptionally. While Nagesh Kukunoor, and Satish Kaushik bring out the creepiness of their characters very well with gut –wrenching performances. The Director Kukunoor definitely deserves applause for his execution and realistic depiction of the harsh realities without embellishment. The movie though excellently made is not an easy watch, but movies like these are required to sensitize us of the harsh realities
which need to be exposed and stopped. Keeping up their record, INDIE MEME brings National Award winning film – COURT, June 20th. With raving reviews of “intelligent, superbly understated script”- VARIETY; Director Chaitanya Tamhane, called “one of the world’s most accomplished and promising film-makers under 30”-Hollywood-reporter. Check out indiememe.com for more details, membership or sign up for their newsletter. For LAKSHMI review and excerpts of Conversation with Kuknoor check out my blog - http://www. Bollywoodfilmcritic.blogspot. com/ a Critique of Bollywood Movies, Film making, Film Industry and Bollywood Blah!
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Big Multi Starrer From Maniratnam? Could Bollywood’s Aamir Khan Be China’s Next Big
After bouncing back to sublime form with ‘OK Kanmani’, director Maniratnam has kick-started pre production work of his next film, which is said to be a multi starrer bilingual in Tamil and Telugu.
The new film will have Telugu
Super Star Magesh Babu as hero with Shruti Haasan playing his lady love and Nagarjuna and Aishwarya Rai Bachan as the parallel pair. A host of Frontline actors from both Tamil and Telugu cinema will join the cast. A.R Rahman will score the music to Va i r a m u t h u ’s lines and the rest of the cast and crew details of this Madras Talkies production will be out soon.
Movie Star?
He may not be up there yet with Hollywood actors Tom Cruise or Vin Diesel, and he’s no threat at
the moment to the status of China’s Huang Bo or Fan Bingbing. But as far as non-Hollywood foreign stars in China go, he’s right at the top of the heap The record-setting PRC release of his Bollywood satirical com-
edy PK has now cemented Aamir Khan’s standing as the highest grossing foreign star of nonEnglish language films in China. As of this past weekend his current release there, PK, owns the record for the most successful Indian film in Chinese history, and if it can continue to perform well for another week or so it could even become the mainland’s highest grossing non-English language foreign film ever. Lest that seem like only a modest achievement, consider this: for his next film Khan is paired with no less a Chinese luminary than mega-star Jackie Chan in a China-India co-production film that’s scheduled to release in 2016. With their action-comedy vehicle
Kung Fu Yoga, Khan and Chan aim to set a high bar for movies being made under the India-China film treaty. Each country stands to benefit by opening up more revenue opportunities in the other’s territory, and there’s no better way for them to do that than by putting their top film emissaries up to the task. Khan’s trajectory as a box office magnet in China began in 2011 with the release of his hugely successful buddy comedy 3 Idiots. While it grossed only a modest $2 million in theaters, the film found great popularity on TV and online and made Khan a household name. His next film to be released there, Dhoom 3, earned 56 percent more than 3 Idiots, and now PK looks set to more than triple the revenue that Dhoom 3 took in.