Gandu (2010)
Gandu (2010)
This page is under construction Expect more after Nov 2014
Note: The film Gandu was available on YouTube but now seems to have been taken off.
Gandu is a low- budget ‘art’ film in Bengali, much of it filmed in crisp, well photographed black and white. There is a lovemaking scene in colour. Its DVDs are not available legally in India and, from all accounts, it has not been screened commercially in India.
Q is the pseudonym of director Qaushik Mukherjee. (See Q (Kaushik Mukherjee))
Gandu is a North Indian word derived from the Hindi-Bengali term for derriere. Its nearest English equivalent is ‘asshole’ and it implies a male who receives anal sex.
It was the first Bengali film with full-frontal nudity and the second Indian film after Trishagni. Not since Mera Naam Joker has an actress clearly been seen fully naked from behind either. (Parampar was somewhat hazy. The director and photographer saw her naked; the audience had to guess.)
Audience reaction to Gandu was not very different from that to India’s other famous cheesecake films (Chitkabrey, Rang Rasiya, Mr Singh…, Maya…): they were bored. Many viewers could reportedly not sit through Gandu at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film has also been shown at the South Asian International Film Festival in New York and at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Mukherjee is reported to have said that ‘70% of [the film had] to be about sex." Most audiences want some sex with a story around it—which Gandu has, and some viewers have even appreciated its narration.
Gandu, Nandini Ramnath writes, was never meant to be released (in India): and it was not. Because its budget was microscopic, what it earns in foreign territories (through the British sales and distribution agency, Jinga Films) more than recovers costs. Chakraborty also subsidises his “cheap [budgets of Rs.25-30 lakh] and dirty pictures about sexual, social or political extreme content that otherwise can’t be made” through films like Tasher Desh (based on Rabindranath Tagore’s play, and exhibited within India as well). He has two label Bangla Black, for offbeat films, and Overdose Films.
