Epic Effort

The film,which has been directed by Chetan Desai,has been made at Mehta’s facility in Mumbai by a 400-people team over two-and-a-half years.

With the film ready for release,the promos look promising as the quality stands out among the animation that has until now come out of India. Mehta promises that Ramayana is the most adventurous and expensive animation ever made in the country. Retelling an epic as popular as the Ramayana can be risky since the story is known to all. But Mehta considers it the safest bet for precisely the same reason. “The Ramayana holds appeal even today,thousands of years after it is said to have been written. It is impossible to translate the grandeur and the setting of this epic in live action. Hence,animation is the only way to retell it in all its glory,” he says.

The film’s length has been maintained at 108 minutes since the audience is chiefly children and young adults. But given its release during the festive season,Mehta is hopeful that the film will find audience in people from age groups and across the country since it has been dubbed in six languages — Hindi,English,Gujarati,Bengali,Tamil and Telugu. Manoj Bajpai,Juhi Chawla and Ashutosh Rana have been roped in to lend voices to Ram,Sita and Raavan respectively,in the Hindi version.

Soon after the release of the Ramayana,says Mehta,his directorial project Rang Rasiya will hit the theatres. The film,earlier scheduled for 2009,has witnessed delay due to various factors. “Distribution rights is one of them. Besides,given that the film is a historical,a biopic of the world-renowned artist Raja Ravi Varma,it is an expensive film that required much work. But now it’s ready in both English and Hindi,” he adds.

As someone who was a part of the new age cinema movement back in the 1980s,it is the freedom of expression that he wants to support through Rang Rasiya. “I miss that phase when liberal filmmaking was a way of being.” The 58-year-old points out that the term “parallel cinema”,which he feels was coined by the media for their convenience,has done disservice to cinema. “Many socially relevant films that held mass appeal were classified as ‘arthouse’,‘parallel’ and ‘commercially unviable’ projects,which led to the decline in such movies.”

The maker of Mirch Masala and Hero Hiralal,feels that the scenario is fast-changing now as young,new directors try varying subjects and treatments. Remarks the otherwise-reclusive director,“It inspires me to become more prolific as a filmmaker. I should be announcing my next film soon.”

In 1990,while shooting the climax of Maya Memsaab — where Deepa Sahi,who plays the title role,drinks a magic potion,bursts into light and disappears — Ketan Mehta found himself grappling with the available technology to create the scene convincingly. “In India,we were still using World War II technology and so,to create the special effect,we travelled to Hong Kong. When the movie released,I was dissatisfied with the outcome. That’s when I decided to create a facility for special effects,” says Mehta about the genesis of his Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics. And as the company marks a decade in the business this year,the veteran filmmaker is releasing their first animation film,Ramayana — The Epic,this Dussehra.

The film,which has been directed by Chetan Desai,has been made at Mehta’s facility in Mumbai by a 400-people team over two-and-a-half years.

With the film ready for release,the promos look promising as the quality stands out among the animation that has until now come out of India. Mehta promises that Ramayana is the most adventurous and expensive animation ever made in the country. Retelling an epic as popular as the Ramayana can be risky since the story is known to all. But Mehta considers it the safest bet for precisely the same reason. “The Ramayana holds appeal even today,thousands of years after it is said to have been written. It is impossible to translate the grandeur and the setting of this epic in live action. Hence,animation is the only way to retell it in all its glory,” he says.

The film’s length has been maintained at 108 minutes since the audience is chiefly children and young adults. But given its release during the festive season,Mehta is hopeful that the film will find audience in people from age groups and across the country since it has been dubbed in six languages — Hindi,English,Gujarati,Bengali,Tamil and Telugu. Manoj Bajpai,Juhi Chawla and Ashutosh Rana have been roped in to lend voices to Ram,Sita and Raavan respectively,in the Hindi version.

Soon after the release of the Ramayana,says Mehta,his directorial project Rang Rasiya will hit the theatres. The film,earlier scheduled for 2009,has witnessed delay due to various factors. “Distribution rights is one of them. Besides,given that the film is a historical,a biopic of the world-renowned artist Raja Ravi Varma,it is an expensive film that required much work. But now it’s ready in both English and Hindi,” he adds.

As someone who was a part of the new age cinema movement back in the 1980s,it is the freedom of expression that he wants to support through Rang Rasiya. “I miss that phase when liberal filmmaking was a way of being.” The 58-year-old points out that the term “parallel cinema”,which he feels was coined by the media for their convenience,has done disservice to cinema. “Many socially relevant films that held mass appeal were classified as ‘arthouse’,‘parallel’ and ‘commercially unviable’ projects,which led to the decline in such movies.”

The maker of Mirch Masala and Hero Hiralal,feels that the scenario is fast-changing now as young,new directors try varying subjects and treatments. Remarks the otherwise-reclusive director,“It inspires me to become more prolific as a filmmaker. I should be announcing my next film soon.”