Made in delhi

Rang De Basanti took a contemporary look at Delhi’s college culture and brought forth, through commendable cinematography, the sights and sounds of the city. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra now returns to the Capital with Dilli 6. Prasoon Joshi, who has co-written the film, explains that having lived in Old Delhi, Mehra wants to bring to the celluloid the lesser tread paths of the metro.

While, initially, it was imperative to move bag and baggage and be close to the action, Delhi-based directors no longer feel the need to do so. Director Dibakar Bannerjee of Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye chose the historic city for his convenience: “I grew up here so the stories I envision also take root in Delhi.” Bannerjee talks about his comfort level in projecting the city: “There’s so much colour and zing — the clothes, the way people talk and how they add an ‘oye’ before or after one’s name.”

Anand Kumar, director of Jugaad, agrees. “My first film Delhii Heights and now Jugaad, both capture the essence of the city I grew up in. The latter is a true story of a man who lost everything in the property-sealing drive of 2006, so Jugaad couldn’t have been made anywhere else,” he says. Bannerjee and Kumar had to manage accommodation for the cast but feel it is worth it if the product is well-made.

Mumbaikars have always been envious of the luxury of space that Delhiites enjoy. The green, open locales are a cinematographer’s delight, if the producer can’t take the film to foreign locales. Joshi feels that unlike Mumbai, Delhi has a lot of character. “Mumbai is the ideal destination for a gangster film for the way it is built but Delhi has space, which can be reinterpreted in multiple plots,” he says. A case in point could be Nikhil Advani’s action comedy, Chandni Chowk to China, which also takes the audience into the by-lanes of Old Delhi.

Bannerjee also feels that the oft-explored Mumbai looks jaded now. “One can move away from the usual Red Fort, Qutab Minar shots and into the real city. The protagonist in Lucky grows up in a lower middle-class area where power theft is common. To create that background, we shot in an area where the windows open into a mesh of wires,” he says.

But low budgets alone aren’t pushing filmmakers to consider Delhi. Production houses that can afford Switzerland are also among those lining up here. Not much is known about Aamir Khan Productions’ next, Delhi Belly, but the name gives away the fact that the city stands at the core of the script.