What does a credit risk analyst, a business consultant, software developer and an advertisement professional have in common? The love of acting! Yes, these eight Bengalureans who have been prominent in the world of theatre, have now made one of their popular plays into a film. ‘Bechara Mara Gaya’ which was released online earlier this month and is all set to screen at a few film festivals around the world.
Asking them to pose for a photoshoot is a tedious task, as they are always jumping around and showing ridiculous faces at the camera. But how did these people manage to make a feature film and that to in one take? Ask the director Rajaram Rajendran and he effuses “We know each other too well and they are great actors by default so it was easy.” The movie is a political satire and had the actors doing a month long rehearsal to get their parts right. “We had a very low budget and were quite eager to make a an interesting movie. So, we decided to shoot it on one shot and thankfully it came out well,” quips, Rajaram. “Since it is shot in just one take, when one watches the film they have a feeling of being present there on the sets,” says Parvathi Om, the only girl in the gang.
Friends for over ten years, this group had been into acting and say that though they all have day jobs to go to; they prefer rehearsals and scripts. The one and a half hour film, had been enacted on stage by them for the last four years. “We loved performing it on stage and when we wanted to make a movie we decided to go ahead with the same one,” says Abhinav Kimothi, who plays the role of inspector Manohar Tiwari. However, he adds that, “Usually there is a lot of exaggerated acting when it is on stage, but in front of the camera we have a lot of natural acting to do.”
The movie has been receiving quite a lot of good reviews as another actor Nitin Sharma claims, “We have performed this play all over the country and people who know us too well have encouraged us to make more of our plays into such feature films.” The movie can be seen free of cost on their website becharamaragaya.com.
