Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Hamara Shaher

Timestamp:

Jul 17, 2012, 6:02:11 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Hamara Shaher

@@ +1 @@
+'''Hamara Shaher'''
+
+
+aka Bombay Our City
+1985 82’ col Hindi/Tamil/English/Marathi
+d/p/s/co-c Anand Patwardhan co-c Vijay
+Khambati, Pervez Mehrwanji, Venugopal
+Thakker Hindi voice-over Deepa Arora, Rita
+Bhatia, Supriya Pathak, Om Puri,
+Naseeruddin Shah, Rahul Varma
+
+
+Patwardhan’s most acclaimed documentary,
+made on 16mm, tells of Bombay’s millions of
+pavement-dwellers. Throughout the early 80s
+there were several brutal efforts to evict
+families who lived in illegal tenements and on
+pavements although they provided the city
+with the casual (esp. construction) labour
+crucial to its economy. The film looks at the
+culture of Bombay’s elite, often contrasting
+what they say with the physical conditions in
+which they say it: the former municipal
+commissioner bemoans the lack of space in the
+city while his pet dog trots around his spacious
+garden; the Police Commissioner Julio Ribeiro,
+in a speech at the Advertising Club, talks about
+the poor as ‘low-quality, low-intelligence’
+people. The pavement-dwellers work in the
+construction industry in the city’s expensive
+Nariman Point area on land reclaimed from the
+sea, while massing clouds on the horizon
+evoke the possibility of an unbalanced
+environment which may cause tidal waves to
+wash away their seaside huts. The film
+achieves epic dimensions in three remarkable
+sequences. Street urchins sell the Indian flag on
+a rainy Independence Day, keeping their
+precious commodities dry while the huge
+Gothic facade of the Victoria Terminus presides
+over a police march-past; in the thick of the
+monsoon, a child in one of the homeless
+families dies; a woman pavement-dweller’s
+angry outburst at the film-makers, all highlight
+the issues involved in the making of this type
+of documentary.
+
+[[Film]]