Dream Before the Dying of the Light

Superboys of Malegaon | Director: Reema Kagti | Cast: Adarsh Gourav, Vineet Kumar Singh, Shashank Arora

HUMAARI KAHANI, HUMAARI zubaani (It is our story, in our lan­guage). Instead of looking for work in Mumbai, a group of young men decide to bring Mumbai to Malegaon, a dusty town in Maharashtra. They make their own films their own way. Everyone may think they’re mad, but as their champion Nasir Shaikh says, that’s what everyone thought of Buster Keaton. With that passion and the belief that writer “baap hota hai baap” (the writer is the OG), these young men who live and breathe cinema make their own movies, from ‘Malegaon ke Sholay’ to ‘Superman of Malegaon’. The movie is exhilarating and traumatic. Not every dream is fulfilled, and even if it is, it is for a moment. But what a moment. When Shashank Arora flies across a homemade green screen in a cape, when Adarsh Gourav splices Bruce Lee’s action with Charlie Chaplin’s laughs, your heart breaks. Shaikh’s father dismisses his filmmaking as a hobby, but it is an obses­sion. Their story has been chronicled by Faiza Ahmad Khan in the documentary Supermen of Malegaon (2008) but it is still fresh here. “Why dream of flying high, you will die in Malegaon” , says a song from the movie. This film allows your dreams to take flight, and not go before the dying of the light. So will women filmmakers save Mumbai? On the evidence of the last two years and movies such as Laapata Ladies and All We Imagine As Light, a resounding yes.

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