MALEGAON (India), Aug 20 — Half a day’s drive from India’s entertainment capital Mumbai, many in the struggling textile city of Malegaon escape the thrum of dawn-till-dusk industrial weaving looms by daydreaming about Bollywood stars. Among them is amateur filmmaker Shaikh Nasir who, after decades of dedication to creating homemade movies, is celebrating having his own story turned into a film that will be shown internationally on the big screen. “The cinema is, and always has been, our escape from everyday lives and our daily struggles,” 50-year-old Nasir said.
Video parlours remain popular in the industrial city, where factory workers and daily wage labourers pack small dark rooms to watch Bollywood classics on large TV screens, with tickets far cheaper than a real cinema. For them, Nasir is already a star. As a young struggling wedding videographer and self-described “unemployed cinema buff” in the mid-2000s, Nasir took action.
“I decided to make a movie with cheap rented cameras, innovative production hacks and a crew of equally enthusiastic film fanatics,” he told AFP. He poured in his savings and raised cash from friends to fund a series of Bollywood and Hollywood spoofs. Most famous was “Malegaon Ka Superman”, or “Malegaon’s Superman”, in which a caped superhero fights cancer-causing tobacco to save the day.
‘Unlikely dream factory’ To make the hero fly, creative special effects included dragging the actor on roller skates, or strapping .