Gandu
APRIL 1 » 4:15p
NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE
2010, India, 85 min.
Director: Q Screenwriter: Q
Cast: Anubrata, Joyraj Bhattacharya, Rituporna Sen
Official Selection Slamdance Film Festival 2011
Grand Jury Prize Seattle International Film Festival 2011
Film should take you places, and Gandu will take you somewhere that you’ve never been before. Gandu is twenty and comes from Kolkata. In local slang, his name means “loser” or “asshole.” His mother is the mistress of a local businessman, trading sex for the apartment that she and Gandu live in. During their trysts, Gandu steals money from the man’s wallet, and uses the cash to finance his solitary forays through the city. Thwarted in real life, Gandu often retreats into rap-driven fantasies, where he can express his rage and despair. One day he befriends a local rickshaw driver and Bruce Lee devotee. The two outcasts begin a strange descent into a world of music and drugs.
Director Q. (born Kaushik Mukherjee) breaks away from traditional Indian film, pulling out all the stops—subtitles, supertitles, superimpositions, split screens, films within films, and Technicolor interludes—but never at the expense of his story. He eschews the tropes of Bollywood, trading glossy color for gritty black-and-white, chaste romance for graphic sexuality, and traditional narrative for a risky, post-modern third act. Gandu is a manifesto, a self-proclaimed antiBollywood adventure, and a possible revolution for Indian film. Don’t miss the first salvo.
PLAYING WITH
Orion’s Belt
Michael Bucuzzo
5 min.
Objects and ideas collide in a dizzying soundscape.
Underwater Experiences
Ramona Pettygrave Shah
1 min.
An awakening from a submerged fugue state. Featuring music by Roger Miller of Mission of Burma.
