Malegaon ka superhero gets last wish, dies

Mateen Hafeez & Bharati Dubey I TNN

Mumbai: Shafique Shaikh, the cancer stricken M a l e g a o n man who starred in
M a l e ga o n Ka Superman, had one last wish: to see his film’s release before his death. The film was released on Tuesday evening and he died on Wednesday morning after watching the final cut. Shaikh (23), father of two, was diagnosed with cancer last year and was being treated at Tata Memorial Hospital.

Nasir Khan, director of the film, said, “Shaikh’s last wish was to watch the film in a cinema hall. He was going through a tough time and we decided to organize a premiere at 6 pm on Tuesday. At 6 am on Wednesday, Shaikh died.” Shaikh was buried at Malegaon’s Bada Qabrastan (cemetery) around 2 pm on Wednesday. Thousands attended the funeral.

“On our request, film-maker Anurag Kashyap and several other Bollywood personalities had come to watch the premiere. Shaikh was brought to Central cinema in a news channel van and taken inside on a stretcher. Though he could not speak, we saw him smiling everytime the audience clapped,” said Khan.

“After the film, the audience shook hands with the actor and congratulated him. He was taken home afterwards. Late at night, he felt acute pain and was breathless in the morning,” said Akram Khan, a unit member who played villain in the film. The spoof, where ‘Superman’ fights the menace of tobacco, was scheduled for a December release. Shaikh, a resident of Gulab Park in Malegaon, used to chew around 40 packets of gutka a day.

“Our movie is against the menace of tobacco. Sadly, our lead hero fell prey to it,” said a unit member.
“Actor Deepti Bhatnagar (producer of Malegaon Ka Chintu) footed the bill for Shaikh’s treatment at Tata Memorial Hospital,” the unit member added. Producer Sunil Bohra, who plans to have a theatrical release of the film in November, told TOI, “We will take care of his wife and children. We have asked his family to open a bank account and we will send them money on a regular basis.’’


The Times of India, September 8, 2011

Team to probe ways to bail out Malegaon blasts accused

MUSLIM DELEGATION MEETS R R PATIL


Mateen Hafeez TNN

Mumbai: A delegation of Muslim activists, clerics, advocates and workers from several NGOs met home minister R R Patil at Mantralaya on Thursday and demanded the release of nine men arrested in the 2006 Malegaon blasts case.
Patil agreed to form a team of Muslims lawyers, a national investigation agency (NIA) public prosecutor and the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) officer who had filed the first chargesheet in the blasts case. “The team will look into what can be done
to bail these boys out,” said Fareed Batatawala of the Muslim Front. The delegation also told Patil that the Muslim community was angry with the government’s way of handling this case. “When Swami Aseemanand has confessed his role in the blasts, why are the Muslim boys not being released?” asked Batatawala.

To build pressure on the government, a delegation of Muslim MLAs from the state, led by chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, on Wednesday, met union home minister P Chidambaram. Maharashtra minority affair and Waqf minister Naseem Khan along with MLAs Baba Siddiqui, Aslam Shaikh, Ameen Patel and film-maker Mahesh Bhatt insisted that the government should be fair in delivering justice to minorities. Chidambaram assured the delegation that injustice will not be done to minorities.


The Times of India, August 19, 2011

‘Malegaon ka Superman’ Eid release a gift for actor

PERSONAL CAUSE: Shafique, who fights the tobacco scourge in the film, was a gutka addict


Leading Man Is In Advanced Stage Of Cancer

Mateen Hafeez | TNN

Mumbai: Anxious over Malegaon ka Superman’s deteriorating health due to cancer, the film’s director and producers have decided to release the movie on the occasion of Eid. The spoof, where ‘Superman’ fights the menace of tobacco, was scheduled for a December release. However, it will now be released in three weeks as an “Eidi” (Eid gift) for Shaikh Shafique, the 23-year-old lead actor.

Shafique, a residentof Gulab Park in Malegaon, used to chew around 40 packets of gutka a day. He was admitted toTata MemorialCancer Hospital last year where he underwent treatment for cancer. Today, though, he is said to be in an advanced stage of theillness. The movie’s director, Nasir Khan Prince, said that it is “very tough” for the unit to see Shafique in such pain.

“We aredoing our best. We admitted him to Mumbai’s Tata Hospital and the entire billwas paidby actressDeepti Bhatnagar (who is a producer of the television programme Malegaon Ka Chintu). He underwent an operation and is currently at home,” said Prince.

“Our movie is against the menace of tobacco. Sadly, our lead hero fell victim to it,” said Prince. Fed up with his condition, Shafique even “tried to kill himself” on two occasions.

Shafique had been chewing tobacco and gutka since the age of 13. He got married when he was 19 and his wife, Jameela, was just 17. The couple has two daughters; a three-year-old and a twomonth-old. Today, he can’t eat spicy food and his jaw is very sensitive to the temperature of any food. He finds it difficult to even speak.

The 2009 low-budget Malegaon ka Superman was screened at IFFI in Goa in December 2010. It has won awards at film festivals in Los Angeles, Prague, Italy and Pakistan. Shafique, who played ‘Superman’ in the movie, had earlier played various roles in other films made in Malegaon. The Class-VIIdropouthas actedin Khandesh to Goa, Khandesh ki Baraat, Khandesh ka Qarazdar Master, Malegaon ki Lagaan and Khandesh ka Doctor, among such others.


The Times of India, August 16, 2011

Malegaon Ka Ghajini completes 50 days

Malegaon: The newly released movie, Malegaon Ka Ghajini, has completed 50 days of screening successfully. Like Ghajini hero(Aamir Khan), the lead character in this movie too has memory problem. The movie, starer by mimicry artist Shakeel Bharti, has been shot in Malegaon and suburbs with a budge of Rs 50,000. Shot over a period of one year, it highlights the social problems like sky rocketing prices of vegetables, milk, sugar, increasing property tax, water tax, etc. It also brings the menace of dowry to audience' notice.

This movie is schedule to be screened in a cinema hall in Bhiwandi from first week of January 2011.

Dreaming big

By Rinky Kumar
Shaikh Nassir has pioneered the trend of directing popular remakes like Malegaon Ke Sholay and Malegaon Ka Superman with limited resources


Text: Set in the narrow bylanes of Malegaon, popularly known as the power-loom town of Maharashtra, Shaikh Nassir's video parlour was a one-stop entertainment shop for film lovers ten years ago. Stocked with black and white classics, Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters, Nassir's parlour offered a wide range of options to the locals for over two decades to entertain themselves at the end of long hard day.


Though his shop did brisk business, Nassir always nurtured a desire to provide a different kind of entertainment to the locals. The movie-buff, who had acted in several school dramas and watched Chitrahaar, the weekly show on popular Bollywood songs on Doordarshan religiously during his childhood, says, “I loved watching movies of Jackie Chan, Charlie Chaplin and James Bond and always felt that I should make films to entertain everyone.” He gradually learnt video shooting and started his career by capturing local weddings on a video camera.


Bur rather than making an original film, Nassir decided to make remakes of popular movies. “I would have loved to make a brand new film, but it would have been too expensive. So I thought of directing remakes and make the best use of the limited resources available.”


In 2000, Nassir decided to make his first film as a remake of the evergreen blockbuster Sholay, one of his personal favourites. “Two of my friends resembled Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra and I didn't have to try too hard to scout for the locations,” he says. So he took a loan of Rs 50,00 from his brother, roped in his friends and used daily equipments to make the film. “We had limited resources and a tight budget so we had to use the available equipments. After much brain storming, I decided that we could use a bullock cart as a crane and a trolley as a cycle and used a video camera to shoot the film in Malegaon. I also roped in my friends Akram Khan and Hameed Subani to write the film's script.”


The duo tried to stay as close to the original script as possible and only incorporated few changes to make the film set in the local milieu and make it funny. So Gabbar Singh became Rubber Singh and Basanti was called Basmati. While in the original, Gabbar Singh's men raid the villager's homes and rob them of their money and jewellery, in the remake, Rubber Singh's men board a local bus and rob the natives of daily amenities.


Shot within a span of two months, Nassir eventually made VHS tapes of the film and then sold them in his parlour. The film was a resounding success among the locals and the debutant director managed to make a profit of Rs two lakhs.


Inspired by this success, Nassir decided to make more such films. His second venture was called Malegaon ki Shaan, a remake of director Ramesh Sippy's superhit Shaan and was shot with a Panasonic digital TV camera. “Malegaon Ki Shaan was a parody of the original. We had better resources for this movie so in terms of picture quality and cinematography, it was much better than my first film,” says Nassir. Once again, they used local amenities to add a certain finesse to the movie. In the original, Shakaal (played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda) has a revolving chair. In the remake, the villain had a similar chair which was placed on a bullock cart's wheel that was manually spinned by the crew during the shoot. Like its predecessor, Malegaon ki Shaan, too proved to be a success amongst the locals.


But Nassir shot in the limelight after filmmaker Faiza Ahmed Khan and her team shot a documentary, The Making of Malegaon Ka Superman, on his forthcoming movie Malegaon ka Superman. Shot in 2009, the film is a spoof on DC comic's famous superhero and will be released in the power loom town this year during Eid. It's based on a shy boy who suddenly gets superhero powers. Shot within a month on a budget of Rs one lakh, it stars Akram Khan, who is a far cry from the conventional Superman. He's a thin, short man who dons Superman's light blue outfit with M for a new emblem (denoting Malegaon) and wears boxer shorts with long draw strings (nada) deliberately left hanging. Khan dances in the fields, saves his love interest from goons and can't fly too high as he's malnourished. “We made Akram slide on a log of wood that juts out of a cart and asked the crew members to wave out his red cape from behind. The cart moves forward taking Akram along and creates an impression that he's flying,” explains Nassir.


The documentary was screened at the Osian Film festival last year and generated a lot of interest about Nassir's film. “Malegaon ka Superman has travelled to several film festivals including Doha International Film Festival and has also been screened at the 40th International Film Festival (IFFI) at Goa,” says the director excitedly.


Nassir's success story has prompted other movie-buffs to try their hand at directing similar films. He has given creative inputs for other movies like Malegoan Ke Karan Arjun, Malegaon Ki Lagaan and Malegaon Ka Don, which have also been loved by the natives of the power-loom town.


Thanks to his works, Nassir is now directing SAB TV's latest silent comedy Malegaon Ka Chintu. Inspired by popular British comedy series Mr Bean, the show is about a simple native of Malegaon and the hilarious incidents in his life. As of now, Nassir is focussing all his energies on his debut television serial. Quiz him, if he's keen on making any more films and Nassir says, “Right now, I'm concentrating only on Malegaon Ka Chintu and films have taken a a backseat. I just hope the show is liked by everyone.”



Screen, July 4, 2010

COUNTERFEIT CINEMA - Mr Bean goes to MALEGAON

Nasir Khan,the film-maker who launched Malegaons spoof industry,now brings out a desi Mr Bean

Sharmila Ganesan-Ram | TNN


If Superman were a Malegaon resident,he would wear chappals,administer polio drops to infants and save crows from the onslaught of kites before going on to defeat his sworn enemya gutkha baron.Mr Bean,on the other hand,would ride a bullock cart,park it deliberately at a petrol pump and direct the attendant towards the Lunar bike mounted at the rear of his manual vehicle.Welcome to Malegaons sense of humour or,in other words,Shaikh Nasirs imagination.

Nasir,the 35-year-old father of Malegaons notoriously wacky spoof industry,has introduced many classic Hollywood and Bollywood characters to the satellite town of Malegaon by giving them its quintessential dialogue,looks,circumstances and well,food.After having conquered local imagination with such cult spoofs as Malegaon Ke Sholay,Malegaon Ka James Bond and Malegaon Ka Superman,the impoverished filmmaker is now ready to invade national television with his version of Mr Bean titled Malegaon Ka Chintu.A mute comedy based loosely on Mr Bean,the film will go on air next month.It will be full of one-minute gags,and the protagonist will be played by another Malegaonbased film director, reveals Nasir,whose stint as a video parlour owner was instrumental in sowing the seeds of filmmaking in this frail shopkeepers head.

At this video parlour,where the young Nasir used to treat residents of the entertainment-starved satellite town to Charlie Chaplin,Jackie Chan and Rambo movies as also Bollywood flicks,he would observe consumer behaviour.These observations served as editing cues.I noticed that people would leave when a song was playing or when the dialogue was too long and boring, he says.Comedy,he discovered,had a timeless appeal.People wont watch the horror movies of the 60s as they find them tacky.But they still like to watch Charlie Chaplin, says Nasir,adding that humour makes a film evergreen.His other parttime professionthat of a wedding videographerwas also providential;it led him to discover many faces which seemed to bear a resemble to actors.This equipped him with the idea of remaking the legendary 1970s hit Sholay for his people,who had no other hangouts like gardens or beaches,only cinema halls.

I hadnt even thought of returns then;I just wanted to do it for myself, remembers Nasir,who made the film at the unbelievably modest budget of Rs 50,000 within two months.Locals were hired (chiefly Nasirs friends who worked for free),bullock carts used in place of cranes and bicycles served as both camera trolleys and Gabbar Singhs horses.

The script,jokes,dialogues and even incorrigible lyrics like Yeh dosti doke ka taan hai,len den kuch nahin,mushkil mein jaan hai were all Nasirs.Once released,the film fetched the budding director Rs 2 lakh and a cult following.The money helped him upgrade to a helicopter in his next venture,Malegaon Ki Shaan and later,when he discovered chroma,he found the courage to import Superman.

Many people from Japan and Singapore,who were intrigued by my ways,came down and watched the making of this film, says Nasir,about the Rs 1-lakh film whose making was punctuated by such incidents as the camera falling into the river and Superman being able to fly in the film only when he was rolled along on a plank of wood placed atop a bicycle.The documentary,called Supermen Of Malegaon,which records the making of this film,has clinched awards at film festivals in Los Angeles, Prague,Pakistan and Italy.When the feature film Malegaon Ka Superman was shown at a festival in Goa,international buyers jostled to snap up the rights.In Delhi,a roomful of 2,000 school students demanded that the show be repeated at least four times,says Nasir,who recalls British film-maker Paul Martin being astonished by his low-budget film-making exercise.

At the Osian film festival six months ago,Rishi Kapoor came up to me and congratulated me.Even Anurag Kashyap said he was a fan, recalls Nasir,who is not easily floored by flattery.It only makes me want to compete with myself, says the man whos made 11 films so far and confesses that the journey has been very enjoyable.
Of course,there have been challenges.Sometimes,the so-called actors could not say their lines and demanded numerous retakes.As most of them were daily wage labourersbook binders,printers and loom workersthey would often miss shoots to attend the call of duty which actually pays.And punctuality remained a dream.If you call them at 7 am,they turn up at 11 am, says Nasir.But the reactions of the audiences in the theatrewho would come chiefly to spot relatives on the big screenmade,and makes,it all worth it.

People often seek him out for autographs at film festivals,but at home,Nasir says,he enjoys no such limelight.There,he is still an impoverished video parlour-owning son.Ghar ki murgi daal barabar, laughs this incorrigible superman of Malegaon.

The Times of India, July 25, 2010

Malegaon films- India Reborn

The local film industry, which started in 1998, has hit the headlines internationally. Youngsters belonging to several play group had this innovative idea and the first film they made was the re-make of India's all time hit, Sholay. The movie was re-made with the budget of merely Rs 40,000 with local accent and raised this town's issues.

The Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) had sent a five-member team led by Jacqueline Corkery recently to Malegaon as part of their project entitled as “India Reborn”. "Malegaon ka Superman", was awarded the Best Documentary at Asiatica film mediale, Italy’s biggest event dedicated to Asian films, towards the end of 2009.

Low-budget film-maker from India flies high with Superman of Malegaon

Rhys Blakely in Mumbai

When Slumdog Millionaire wowed audiences having cost a mere £15 million to make, the film industry's savants foresaw a new era of super-frugal, post-credit crunch cinema.

They did not know the half of it. The latest darling of the festival circuit is a dirt-poor director who learned his trade shooting wedding videos in a backwater Indian town. His latest movie was made for just 0.01 per cent of the budget of Danny Boyle's movie.

When Shaikh Nasir, 33, a shopkeeper with a unshakable passion for cinema, embarked on his first feature film in the industrial hub of Malegaon in 2000, his measly 50,000 rupee (£650) budget meant a bullock cart had to serve as a camera crane and neighborhood tradesmen were roped in to star.

Even the plot was second hand. The film was a spoof remake of Sholay, a hit 1970s Bollywood action adventure — even if Mr Nasir's villain's had to forgo the horses ridden by the original's bandits, to travel by bicycle instead.

The homage, with its Python-esque eye for the ridiculous, delighted local audiences and won the director a cult following, but its DIY appeal never extended beyond the subcontinent.

Now, six super-low-budget films later, it appears that Mr Nasir is finally on the cusp of breaking onto the world stage. His latest project, Malegaon ka Superman (Superman of Malegaon), made for a relatively lavish 100,000 rupees, is winning international acclaim.

Something of Mr Nasir's agreeably ramshackle — if slightly loopy — style is gleaned when he recounts his influences. "I learnt my craft from the English classics," he told The Times. "James Bond, Jackie Chan, Charlie Chaplin, Commando, Rambo." Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that while Malegaon's Superman dons the red and blue of his Hollywood namesake, there the similarity ends.

Mr Nasir's hero is played by Shaikh Shafique, a skinny factory worker who was paid about £1.30 a day in what was his first acting role.

Superman's lycra outfit hangs from his scrawny frame. He wears flip flops over his baggy blue leggings, threads hang from his billowing shorts, and his asthma means he is not always up to fighting his nemesis, a local tobacco baron.

This may not sound like the type of fare worthy of winning gongs, but a documentary, called Supermen of Malegaon, which records the making of the feature film has clinched awards at film festivals in Los Angeles, Prague, Pakistan and Italy.

When Malegaon ka Superman was shown at a festival in Goa this week, international buyers jostled to snap up the rights. Consequently, a worldwide cinema release is — astonishingly — on the cards.

Such a move would put Malegaon, a gritty industrial town previously best known for ugly inter-religious violence, on the world cinema map — a status it surely deserves given the dedication of its hard-pressed film makers.

The region, about 180 miles northeast of Mumbai, is famous in India as the site of a bizarre parallel movie universe. Home-produced spoofs of Bollywood blockbusters made by a handful of budding amateur directors are more popular in Malegaon than the originals they parody.

The appeal of the spoofs, which are shown on VHS tape in local "mini theatres", owes much to the incorporation of local idioms and the escape they offer audiuences from the monotony of 14-hour shifts in local factories, Mr Nasir says. There is also the delight to be had in spotting the neighborhood postman hamming it up as, say, an evil henchman.

The Superman film marks the first time Mr Nasir has sought inspiration from Hollywood, but it remains true to his cottage industry ethos. It may have the biggest budget yet and be the first to be edited on computer. But the production process still rests on improvisation.

Superman is only able to achieve the illusion of flight, for instance, because he is held up horizontally above the heads of three of the crew or rolled along on a plank of wood placed on top of a bicycle.

Now, with Superman proving a triumph, Mr Nasir's fans want to know what source material he will tackle next?

"Malegaon ka Dinosaur" — a remake of Jurassic Park — and "Malegaon ka Rambo" have been mooted as "dream projects". However, a remake of another superhero franchise seems most likely: "Malegaon ka Spiderman". Unless, presumably, Hollywood's lawyers consider that an homage too far.

Low-budget blockbusters

• The low-budget zombie film Colin, which featured at Cannes festival this year, was made for £45. Marc Price, the director, said that the budget was spent on “a crowbar and some tapes”

• Robert Rodriguez raised almost $7,000 to make El Mariachi, his first feature film, by taking part in clinical drug trials. He went on to make blockbusters such as Sin City

• Oren Peli’s film Paranormal Activity cost between $10,000 and $15,000 to make and grossed more than $106 million

Sources: Theauteurs.com; Times database

From The Times (Times online December 5, 2009)

Once upon a time in Malegaon

Malegaon is a vast enchanting land with bright green rivulets and undulating pastures where lovers romp as food keeps falling from the sky. But this is from a pig's point of view.

For the human inhabitants of this place whose demarcation from other species is not a municipal success yet, it is a failed town built around melancholic power looms set up by Muslims who had fled after the sepoy mutiny.

With no clear prospects today and nowhere else to go, young men here have a haunting look of being stranded. Fodder for terror, experts says. It was always like this in Malegaon, delicately on the edge, where life unfolds everyday as though something bad is going to happen.

As it did on Friday when bombs went off outside a mosque, disturbing even the sigh of a graveyard. Till a few months ago, Fridays were days of much merriment. Malegaon's own films would release in small video halls. Those were magical moments in the lives of its youth.

When they would emerge from hellish power looms and searing welding sheds, and watch their friends or themselves become part of a parallel cinema that made hilarious spoofs of Hindi films.

From the grime of daily-wage labour rose Malegaon's Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh, Dharmendra, Pran and many others who looked into a mirror and found real or imagined similarities with some men from Bombay, a mythical city believed to be 300 km from their town.

They acted free in Malegaon ke Karan Arjun, Malegaon ka Rangeela and many such films including what is now considered a classic, Malegaon ke Sholay in which Gabbar Singh became Rubber Singh and Basanti became Basmati. These films, against all expectations, became culture.

Shafeeque, a welder who is Malegaon's Amitabh, had even begun to wear sunglasses because he was, "famous". People accosted him on the road and his friends requested him to meet their relatives. But all this ended.

A few months ago, the government banned the video halls in the town because they didn't have licences. Nor did they qualify for the theatre licence. They were considered illegal. They have become clothes stores and restaurants today. Without those primary distribution outlets, Malegaon's unique spoofs died.

This reporter was there about three years ago when they were filming Malegaon ki Lagaan with a budget of about Rs 30,000, an amount that came grudgingly from a lineman with the electricity board after he was promised that his son will be given a role.

The lineman's other demand was that his son and not Malegaon's Aamir should score the winning runs in the film. But the second demand was rejected by director Farogh Jafri, whose red GAP T-shirt was torn at the armpits, "on creative grounds".

This Lagaan was set in 1935 and the story was that an Englishman asks the vegetarian king of Malegaon to swallow an egg. The king refuses and before the Englishman could cut off the power supply to Malegaon, Aamir challenges the white men to a cricket match.

Fair boys from the town played Englishmen and fair girls, sometimes sourced from Mumbai at a rate of Rs 5,000 for three days, played white girls. "They are respectfully treated with Bisleri," said Malegaon's Dharmendra while commenting on his film industry, "and sent back with honour."

When we were there in Malegaon, there were no girls and the local male cast had not assembled on the sets yet. "Those fools wouldn't come for the shoot on some days. But everybody would be here on the day the girls come," the lineman producer said angrily.

However, as the hours passed, the cast of Malegaon ki Lagaan, all of them welders, powerloom workers or unemployed boys, slowly assembled outside a decrepit palace which was locked and the man who had the keys was missing.

When Aamir Khan finally arrived, Farogh remembered one of his misfortunes. He slapped his forehead and said, "My Aamir looks like Ajay Devgan." The boy had got the role after investing Rs 4,000 in the project.

He was supposed to bring more money but after a few scenes were canned he had said that he was broke. They could not change the hero. So they changed the producer.

Farogh faced many other problems. Like, his "cinematographer" was a wedding cameraman and would not turn up for the shoot sometimes if he got sudden wedding assignments. When he did come, he would often sit at one end of a bullock cart as crew members pushed down the other end.

This was the crane in Malegaon. Sometimes, the camera was placed on a bicycle and carted around the characters since Malegaon obviously had no money to hire a trolley to pan the camera.

A scrawny feeble man in a shirt that used be white, who was a standby for the role of Kachra in the film, asked us if we had seen Hema Malini. He said she often appeared in his dreams, "to place my head on her lap and put me to sleep." The enticement of cinema was all too evident in Malegaon.

They were very serious about acting. Some paid money to get significant roles. Some came for the free food. But there was this unmistakable joy on the sets. They were in a movie, and that mattered.

Many of them discussed their future projects which included an ambitious Malegaon ka Rambo and a special effects film called Malegaon ka Dinosaur. We hear that those films could not be made.

And possibly will never be made. Some still make films but these are not glorious spoofs. They are short films with social messages. Those hurried comedies and their grand Friday releases in Malegaon's quaint video halls are all over. Once, in Malegaon, there was art.

The Times of India, September 10, 2006