Eros will release ‘Pagalpanti’, ‘Marjaavaan’, ‘Pati Patni Aur Woh’ and ‘The Body’ This Year
DOUGLAS, Isle of Man–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Eros International Plc (NYSE: EROS) (“Eros” or the “Company”), a Global Indian Entertainment Company, announced today that it will release four Hindi language films across different genres later this year in several overseas markets including the UK, US and Middle East. First to release will be the romantic action film titled ‘Marjaavaan’ on the 15th of November, directed by Milap Zaveri, starring Sidharth Malhotra, Riteish Deshmukh, Tara Sutaria and Rakul Preet Singh. Produced by T-Series and Emmay Entertainment, the film is a dramatic, violent and action-packed love story.
New ‘Pagalpanti’ poster
The second film to be distributed will be ‘Pagalpanti’, which is scheduled to release on the 22nd of November. The forthcoming film is a comedy caper directed by filmmaker Anees Bazmee and produced by T-Series and Panorama Studios. The story of the film revolves around a group of Indian tourists on vacation that turns into a patriotic mission. The comedy stars Anil Kapoor, John Abraham, Ileana D’Cruz and Arshad Warsi.
Closely followed will be two other releases, one titled ‘Pati Patni Aur Woh’ and the other, ‘The Body’. The two starkly different films are scheduled to release simultaneously on the 6th of December. The former is a remake of a cult Bollywood film of the same name. Produced by T-Series and directed by Mudassar Aziz, the highly awaited film stars Kartik Aaryan, Ananya Panday and Bhumi Pednekar. ‘The Body’ is a thriller mystery inspired by its Spanish antecedent. Produced by Viacom18 Motion Pictures, the film is headlined by Emraan Hashmi, Rishi Kapoor, Vedhika and Sobhita Dhulipala.
Sunil Lulla
“Eros continues to be a forerunner in releasing the biggest hits from Bollywood in significant markets across the globe. We take immense pride in taking quality cinema outside of India to maximize its viewership. And with this, we shall continue to forge our own path in the overseas market with the sole objective to delight the Indian diaspora and global consumers seeking fresh content.” Says, Sunil Lulla, Managing Director- Eros International Media Ltd.
About Eros International Plc
Eros International Plc (NYSE: EROS) a Global Indian Entertainment company that acquires, co-produces and distributes Indian films across all available formats such as cinema, television and digital new media. Eros International Plc became the first Indian media company to list on the New York Stock Exchange. Eros International has experience of over three decades in establishing a global platform for Indian cinema. The Company has an extensive and growing movie library comprising of over 3,000 films, which include Hindi, Tamil, and other regional language films for home entertainment distribution. The Company also owns the rapidly growing OTT platform Eros Now. For further information, please visit: www.erosplc.com.
Panaji: Indian Panorama films were screened uncensored for the first time at the 47th International film festival of India (Iffi) and filmmakers, whose movies were screened under the category, said that it did not make sense to censor films at a festival where a select audience is present. Hoping that the new rule of not imposing censorship will continue at Iffi, Indian filmmakers said that censorship is undesirable because individuals who censor films do as per their personal interest.
2015 National Award winner M B Padmakumar, whose Malayalam film ‘Roopantharam’ was screened under Indian Panorama this year, said, that the manner in which censorship is carried out can never be desirable as the filmmaker has his own unique vision for the film.
It was a long-time demand by Indian filmmakers to abolish censorship for films shown under the Indian Panorama section as international films were always being shown at Iffi uncensored.
Gireesh Kumar K, who has won the Golden Bengal Tiger at the Kolkata film festival, said, “Censorship curtails the creative freedom of the filmmaker. The flow of the film is ruined by censorship.”
He said that there is another manner of censorship taking place in India, where a few distributors of films think they know what the audience wants to watch, which means that the audience are unable to see some of the best films in terms of content
Gireesh Kumar K’s film deals with abandonment of aged parents by their children, while Padmakumar’s film shows struggles with disability. Both are independent filmmakers, like Akshay Singh, whose film Pinky Beauty Parlour, dealing with skin colour bias in India, has travelled to Mumbai and Cannes film festivals.
Singh said, “The audience is already mature and always was mature that is why masters like Satyajit Ray made such classic films so long ago.”
Tollywood’s ace producer and distributor acquired film rights of Nanna Nenu Naa Boyfriends in both the Telugu speaking states. The romantic comedy feature Kumari 21 fame Hebba Patel, Rao Ramesh, Noel Sean, Parvateesam and Ashwin playing lead roles.
Under the direction of Bandi Bhaskar, former assistant of VV Vinakaya, the movie is slated for release in November this year. The digital poster and the song of the film were also launched this Wednesday.
The movie is bankrolled by Tata Birla Madhyao Lila fame producer Bekkam Venugopal (Gopi) under Lucky Media banners. “We have been working with the Nanna Nenu Naa Boyfriends’ script for the past one year. This story is a youthful love family entertainer. We are also introducing director V V Vinayak’s former assistant Bhaskar Badi, who is directing the movie. We narrated the story to Dil Raju he asked us to make minor changes and we made the film including all of them. Dil Raju saw the first copy of the movie and appreciated our work. Raju liked our previous movie Cinemachoopista Mama and acquired the Nizam distribution rights for the movie, now the producer loved this script and bought the entire distribution rights of the film. We will release the audio and the film soon,” said Venugopal in a statement.
The movie also stars Krishn Bhagavaan, Dhan Raj and Shakalaka Shankar. Music director Shekhar Chandra is rendering audio for the film. B Sai Krishna wrote the script and cinematography is managed by K Naidu.
There are two experimental films called Events In A Cloud Chamber. One was made by the artist Akbar Padamsee in 1969. The other is by Ashim Ahluwalia in 2016. The first film was a lost experiment, while the second title is an attempt at retrieval and reconstruction. Ahluwalia’s project has been selected for the prestigious Venice Film Festival (August 31-September 10). It has been produced by Ahluwalia’s company, Future East, and the Mumbai art gallery Jhaveri Contemporary.
The filmmaker of the acclaimed documentary John and Jane and the feature Miss Lovely packs into 22 minutes and 54 seconds the modernist giant’s approach to art and his two attempts at avant-garde filmmaking. The first one, Syzygy, made in 1969, is a formal exercise in plotting dots and lines on a blank canvas. Syzygy was screened to the general befuddlement of viewers who had no clue that they were watching one of the earliest steps towards creating an indigenous experimental cinema. Padamsee followed up Syzygy with Events In A Cloud Chamber, in which he created an abstract landscape though drawing, shapes made out of stencils, and photographic slides. The score was provided by classical musician Gita Sarabhai, who famously inspired John Cage’s composition, 4’33”. After Padamsee screened Events at a few places, the film’s single print traveled to the Delhi Art Expo in the 1970s, after which it vanished.
The new film, like the old one, has been made on 16mm. Ahluwalia reconstructs Padamsee’s vision through a collage of images, some archival and some spectral (the contemporary portions have been shot by KU Mohanan). The film patches together a conversation with the 88 year-old artist, whose advanced age restricts him to a wheelchair, clips from home videos made by Ahluwalia’s grandfather that evoke life in the 1940s, scenes from Syzygy, and Films Division footage on International Film Festival of India editions. These seemingly disparate elements cohere beautifully into an investigation into themes of impermanence and evanescence in art and the power of cinema to make the past come alive.
Ashim Ahluwalia
Excerpts from an interview with Ahluwalia.
An investigation into a lost film is filled with cinematic possibilities. What made you choose the form we see in ‘Events in a Cloud Chamber’? Since Events is about a “lost film” it just seemed natural to use other “lost” pieces of celluloid – including some 8mm home movies my grandfather shot in the late 1940s, as well as “found” material from the Films Division archive. This footage uncovers new or hidden meanings, especially in the context of Akbar’s childhood or youth in Bombay – since no other imagery exists of that period. I really didn’t want to make a traditional “talking heads” documentary because it didn’t evoke much. On a broader level, celluloid, magnetic tape and all the things that we used to make films themselves are being “lost” – we just have less and less physical media now, and perhaps this is also something that Events is about.
Events in a Cloud Chamber (2106)
You are resurrecting Akbar Padamsee’s lost film as you go along, but you are also, in one sense, remaking it. Yeah, completely. Loss is often associated with sadness, but it can also be a foundation for something new, with the missing artwork taking on a second life, like a kind of reincarnation. For me, this was a way of situating my filmmaking within the tradition of other Indian artists, in this case Akbar, who had tried to make something so different over 40 years ago. It’s just that the world wasn’t ready for it then. I also think that his radical, unique film was at the risk of being forgotten. I didn’t want that.
There is a sense of a passage of time in the film, as well as the sense of an end, in a way, indicated by the spectral imagery of a frail-looking Padamsee. I’ve always liked the weirdness of ghost stories –haunted houses, sunken cities…things like that. So, yeah, on the one hand, we tried to remake this phantom of a film – Events in a Cloud Chamber – and on another, my film became a way for me to understand what it means to be an artist as you age and near the end. More than just the disappearance of an artwork or an aborted attempt at an experimental film movement, it suggests ideas about mortality.
It’s a personal matter for me because I think about my own end. I think about the end of things, like the planet for example, generally. Maybe this is not a good thing but I’ve never settled into the comfort that anything we leave behind will actually be remembered. Most art and human history is lost. Just a minuscule fraction survives and yet we are so confident of being remembered. So does art stop aging and preclude death? What does it actually mean to make art or anything for that matter?
Akbar Padamsee in ‘Events in a Cloud Chamber’ (2106)
India was wrapping its head around experimental cinema back in the 1970s. Padamsee didn’t make another film after his second effort. Has the scene changed for the better?
Akbar’s film work is still so radical that it doesn’t have a context or a home of any kind, after almost half a century. He was rejected both by the cinema and the artist community, and it caused him to stop making films.
Things have changed a little bit now, and there is a tiny space – but not as much space as there should be. I needed to make this film outside of the traditional film context, as it didn’t seem to fit there at all.
How and where will your film be shown in India? I felt this film was more suited to working with an art gallery as producer and distributor. The gallery, Jhaveri Contemporary, is keen to do a show in November where they will screen the film over the course of a week. Events in a Cloud Chamber is, after all, about a painter who happened to make some of the most radical films in this country, so maybe after all these decades, we kind of managed to find his work a home.
