Master strokes

Mahendroo isn’t taking any chances with his return to film direction after ten years. The budget is around Rs 30 crore and the heroine opposite Adhyayan will be chosen through a reality show. “We’ve got five girls from Chandigarh alone,and they are very pretty and talented,so you never know we select our leading lady from here,” smiles Anand whose diary is marked with projects all year round. “There’s a trilogy on HIV/AIDS which sticks to the core issue and doesn’t titillate the audience,then film Abeer,and Indo-British project The Gift Horse.” But at present,Mahendroo’s entire energy and focus is set on finding the new Raja Ravi Varma of India. “The new Anjolie Ela Menon,the new MF Husain,so we came up with this nation-wide art competition,a hunt for the best painter,” Anand’s pumped his personal funds in the Freedom of Art Expression via his Infinity Art Foundation. “We received around 12,000 entries and have finalised 75 whose works will be exhibited in a travelling exhibition,” this is Anand’s way of tapping into the talent pool of India and taking art to the public just like Raja Ravi Varma did. “That’s why there’s no fee involved and for the first time the winner will get Rs 5 lakh as prize,” Anand has put in a crore and a half and plans to make this an annual movement. “We need more artists,like Ravi Varma,modernist,reformist,progressive,imaginative,impressionistic,realistic…artists who paint like him,with such detail and magnetic effect…” and that’s the reason Rang Rasiya was made at a whopping budget of Rs 16 crore. “Not because it’s a poignant love story or it’s Rang Rasiya,because it’s Raja Ravi Varma.” For more,log onto http://www.rangrasiya.com