Okay, you’ve got to look at this! Is this a film buff’s delight, or some sort of a treasure island of 20 ‘first films’ (read: FTII Pune diploma films) compressed into two DVDs? It’s like striking oil in the slithery fields of Bollywood and discovering how the oil-gush as we know it today sprang up. Master Strokes, a Rudraa Home Video release and an FTII Pune presentation (curated by Tripurari Sharan, director, FTII), makes for 413 minutes of excited viewing (black-and-white films and colour films, with English subtitles, in two separate DVDs) for just Rs 400. Why look a gift horse in the mouth, especially at this time of seasonal goodwill?

Jaya Bhaduri? See your favourite Guddi doing her act for the real first time onscreen in Madan Bavaria’s Suman. And that sultry smouldering Smita Patil? Watch her debuting in celluloid in Arun Khopkar’s Teevra Madhyam! Who’s Vidhu Vinod Chopra? The producer of Lage Raho Munna Bhai/Munna Bhai MBBS and director of 1942 A Love Story/Mission Kashmir/Parinda? Of course! But, hey, isn’t it the same Vidhu Vinod who’s directed Murder at Monkey Hill? And didn’t we see (the late) Renu Saluja slip past in these credits, too, as editor and associate director? And who’s this tough-looking chikna hero with scruffy long hair? Why, Vidhu himself!

It’s impossible not to list the other 17 films: Awashesh (Girish Kasaravalli, originally known as K.G. Girish!), Bonga (Kundan Shah), Vilaap (Surendra Chawdhary), A Day With The Builders (C.J. Paulose), Man vs Man (Shashi Anand), Bodhvriksha (Rajan Khosa), The Eight Column Affair (Sriram Raghavan who directed the recent Ek Hasina Thi; and edited by Rajkumar Hirani, the director of Lage Rago Munna Bhai/Munna Bhai MMBS and editor of Mission Kashmir), Joyce (Jill Misquitta), Hypnothesis (Rajat Kapoor), Yeh Woh Shehar to Nahin (Vajjha Sudhakar Rao), Jam Invalid (Nishta Jain), Let’s Talk a While (Ruchika Oberoi), Jee Karta Hai (Hansa Thapliyal), Chaitra (Kranti Kanade), Do Hafte Guzarte Do Hafte Nahin Lagte (Rajula Shah; and there should be an award for the brilliant title), Saanjh (Jasmine Kaur), Dwijaa (Pankaj Purandare).

The inlay cover is actually a miniature encyclopaedic four-fold leaflet, giving you little stills of each film, complete with all the technical details and credits and a snappy synopsis. Then there are brief paras on all the filmmakers and some USPs of the galaxy of names involved in various capacities as the legendary cinematographers (Jehangir Choudhary) or sound designers (Hitendra Ghosh, Bishwadeep Chatterjee). And one can’t resist the temptation to quote the gem of a line about Pankaj Purandare: “...after working in sales and marketing at MNCs like Nestle and Johnson&Johnson. At FTII, he found his peace and his chaos.” As Nike might have said, Just do it (go and get it).

Your peace, your chaos.