HAZAARON REVISITED

Kay Kay Menon and Chitrangda Singh in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi released in 2005, but had been waiting for a release date since 2003.

To commemorate 10 years of the Sudhir Mishra film that poignantly mirrored love and loss against the backdrop of the Naxalite movement of the ’70s, Purple Movie Town, the film city in Sonarpur, is organising a discussion on the film with students of cinema on Saturday the 19th.

Mishra and his Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi actors — Kay Kay Menon and Chitrangda Singh — are set to be present to discuss and debate the film that created waves when it released in April 2005.

“Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi competed in a large number of international film festivals and won massive critical acclaim, but wasn’t a commercial success. For future filmmakers, this is the kind of film that will always act as an inspiration and be debated and discussed even a decade after it was made,” said Pritimoy Chakraborty, the man behind Purple Movie Town.

Mishra, who has often referred to Hazaaron… as “one of his best works”, Kay Kay, who played Naxal leader Siddharth, and Chitrangda who made a smashing debut as the firebrand Geeta, will interact with students and faculty from the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI) and the Film Studies department of Jadavpur University.

On Thursday, the students watched the film at a special screening organised in their institutes. “Any kind of interaction with industry professionals is always welcome and we are looking forward to this initiative. Our students from various departments — production to cinematography — are going well prepared with production notes and they have scoured the Internet extensively,” said Shyamal Sengupta, head of the department of film and television production, SRFTI.

Purple Movie Town plans to follow up on the initiative with similar events centred on Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth and, yes, Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay. Plans to showcase Bengali films in the same way are on the anvil. “We will organise a similar event around the recent Tolly film Phoring that was critically acclaimed, but didn’t last in cinemas beyond a week,” said Pritimoy.