Different strokes
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Nagesh Kukunoor blends disability and cricket in his latest film Iqbal
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SENSITIVE Tired of cliche'd portrayals of Muslims in our films, Nagesh Kukunoor decided to break the sterotype PHOTO: S. SUBRAMANIUM
Finally, there is a sensitive portrayal of a Muslim character by a sensitive director, though that is not the film's central issue. The issue is "disability being treated with dignity" in the film Iqbal by Nagesh Kukunoor, the maker of Hyderabad Blues, Bollywood Calling and Teen Deewarein. This film made on a shoestring budget of Rs. 2.5 crores, released under the banner of Subhash Ghai's new venture, Mukta Searchlights Films that Ghai has initiated to "promote small budget multiplex films by new and talented directors".
The film that Kukunoor first wanted to make only on disability got infiltrated by the game of cricket, though he calls himself not a great admirer of the game, but "just an ordinary fan". "The idea came when I analysed that films on disability alone cannot sell unless you make a Black, and a film based on cricket alone wouldn't sell unless it were a Lagaan. So I decided to blend both. I chose cricket because this is the only game in India that even a commoner instantly relates to. Since the story is set in a small village, I couldn't have used a game like tennis or golf," explains the young director.
Iqbal is about an 18-year-old deaf and dumb boy from a village called Kolipod. He is obsessed with cricket and wants to make it to India's national team. Except his drunkard father, who thinks it to be waste of time, he gets support from all members of his family.
"I could easily have kept my protagonist a Hindu but I had always been annoyed by our films' clichéd portrayal of a Muslim wearing topi, doing adaab, chewing paan and using a typical dialect. So I decided to make him a Muslim character, gave the name because I am an admirer of the poet Iqbal, and in the film there is a scene where Iqbal's father tells him why the poet's parents gave him that name," says Kukunoor.
For the sign language he zeroed in on the Hellen Keller Institute in Maharashtra where a major part of the shooting was done. The film, earlier named Kolipod Express, was later changed by Kukunoor so that "no one could mistake it for a thriller".
Rana Siddiqui
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