The Bombay of 1930’s to be recreated at Navi Mumbai’s ND Studio.
By Prabhav Hiremath
MUMBAI: People of the digital cinema age must not have heard the name of a film-maker best known for his social film Albela (1951) and the famous song ‘Shola Jo Bhadke’: Bhagwan Abhaji Palav, popularly called as Bhagwan Dada amongst his fellow members.
The thought of telling Dada’s story to the world is now being carved into reality by Niranjan Patwardhan, Assistant Director to Bollywood Director, Madhur Bhandarkar, who worked with him on films like ‘Heroine’ and ‘Fashion’. Today when most story tellers like Rohit Shetty or Neeraj Pandey look for an entertaining or real life incident based plots, the remembrance of film-makers of non-technology era that shot to fame five – six decades ago is just fading, or getting lost.
Marathi actor Atul Todunkar will be seen reprising the role of the character Bhagwan Dada on silver screen and will go on the floors from next month, January 2014.
To give the film the required retro look, the city of Bombay from period 1930 – 1950 will be recreated at Nitin Chandrakant Desai’s ND Studio at Karjat, Navi Mumbai; the satellite city to main Mumbai city. The set will be replicated with the heritage Majestic and Apsara theatres to add to its beauty and authenticity.
Niranjan took to this subject as a research last November, after he read an article on Dada few years back. The write-up had a quote from Dada as, “The distance from Forras Road to Lamington Road can be easily covered in 15 to 20 minutes, but it took me 12 years to reach there…” which set as an inspiration for Niranjan to make a film on him. It was a cherry on the cake moment when Monish Babre, Managing Director, Kimaya Motion Pictures Pvt. Ltd. himself suggested Niranjan to make a film on Dada.
The young lad had to dig deep into the film archives as none of the 65 films that Dada produced, directed or acted in his film career are available currently. It came as a surprise for him to know that even photographs or film stills are now extinct, with only a rare set of pictures from grand-daughters of Chnadra Rao Kadam, the owner of Chandivali Studios.
Bhagwan Dada, born on August 1st, 1913 was one of the most successful film-makers of his time who transited from silent films to talkies and B-grade cinema to blockbusters. Legendary showman, Raj Kapoor made sure that Bhagwan Dada changed to social dramas from stunt driven films.
Success had kissed his feet in 1946 to the extent of having a total of 16 Chevrolets and India’s first customised Impala, a two-storied studio in Chembur and a near-by bungalow; making him one of Mumbai’s richest at that time.