Scroll mehsampur movie sort of resurrects slain punjabi singer amar singh chamkila

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INTERVIEW

‘Mehsampur’ movie (sort of) resurrects slain Punjabi singer Amar Singh Chamkila Nandini Ramnath Nov 15, 2016 · 12:00 pm Kabir Singh Chowdhry’s upcoming debut feature is a meta-narrative that questions the very idea of a biopic.

Image credit: Dark Matter Films

One of the most intriguing trailers of 2016 is out, and it hasn’t emerged out of Big Bollywood. Is Kabir Singh Chowdhry’s Mehsampur a biopic? A mockumentary? An acid trip? All of the above? The under-production film is a meta-narrative in which a filmmaker travels to Punjab to make a movie on singer Amar Singh Chamkila, who was killed along with his wife and stage partner Amarjot on March 8, 1988. Chamkila was a popular folk musician whose earthy, provocative and often bawdy songs commented on Punjabi society during the years of the Khalistani movement. The mystery of who killed Chamkila has never been solved. The film’s title refers to the town where Chamkila was killed, but going by the trailer, Chowdhry has gone far beyond the confines of the conventional biopic. Several films have been announced over the years on Chamkila, and Chowdhry’s project is a comment on the futility of trying to summarise the singer’s complexity in a single production as well as the difficulty of getting a fact-based movie off the ground. Mehsampur, which is among the projects seeking completion funds at the Film Bazaar industry event in Goa (November 20-24), attempts to deconstruct the idea of a definitive biopic about a legend, said 30-year-old Chowdhry, who grew up in Chandigarh and studied anthropology at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai before turning to filmmaking. Excerpts from a conversation. I first heard Chamkila while studying at the Yadavindra Public School. The school was filled with the children of people who had become rich overnight. Chamkila was a rite of passage for us. My parents were progressive, but lots of families would never let their children listen to Chamkila’s songs.

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