Malegaon 'ka' film industry

Shafique Shaikh is a scrawny man of average height and has a lanky frame. Shaikh, regardless of his physical attributes is Malegaon’s Christopher Reeves. Like Reeves, Shaikh wore red underpants over blue stockings in Malegaon ka Superman — Malegaon’s version of the classic superhero movie.

Mollywood is the thriving film industry in the quaint town of Malegaon, situated in Maharashtra’s Nashik district. The town has been regularly churning out remakes of Bollywood films with twisted town-centric storyline and look-alikes, armed with just a ragtag crew and a shoestring budget.

Malegaon’s parallel cinema shot to fame in 2000 with Nasir Shaikh’s debut film Malegaon Ke Sholay, a spoof on Sholay. “We used cycles instead of horses and the train sequence was compromised with the local buses. My Gabbar Singh was called Rubber Singh and Basanti was Basmati,” says Shaikh, affably regarded as Malegaon’s Dada Saheb Phalke.

And Shaikh had to work to earn this title. He ran a video parlour in Malegaon where he screened films for the locals, most of them power loom workers. “I used to buy video cassettes from Mumbai. Among them were films featuring Jackie Chan, Jet Li and the James Bond series. Audiences here don’t understand English, so before screening I would edit the dialogue-heavy bits and retain the action and comedy parts,” he said.

This self-taught editing skills and video shoots taken at local weddings came in handy when he started shooting Malegaon Ke Sholay with a modest budget of Rs50,000 on a VHS camera. “When I released the film in my video parlour it ran for two months and I made a profit of Rs2 lakhs,” smiles Shaikh. The profit gave him the confidence to start building a local film industry.

Working on budgets not exceeding a lakh, Mollywood films are a one man show, with the writer often playing roles of the director, the cameraman and the editor. The film duration is roughly an hour and includes comic sequences and social messages.
Like Bollywood, Mollywood too has song and dance numbers, and though the sound track remains the same, the lyrics are comical. So, the evergreen song from DDLJ —'Tuhje dekha toh yeh jana sanam, becomes photo dekha toh yeh jana sanam' in Khandesh Ke Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. 

It’s not just the songs, even the dialogues have a local flavour and many films use the Khandeshi accent, popular among the local Muslims in the region. Like Koi Mil Gaya in Khandeshi becomes Koi Hil Gaya. “People of Malegaon like vada pav and chicken tikka, so we made them Jadoos’s fuel instead of dhoop,” laughs Ramzan, whose tiny frame resulted in him playing the cute alien, covered in blue paint.

Working on a tight budget also implies optimum utilisation of resources. A tracking shot is canned by mounting the camera on a cycle’s seat with extra padding to ensure a jerk-free shot. A crane shot, on the other hand, is taken with the aid of a bullock cart minus the bullock. “The cameraperson takes the place of the bullock and a team helps lift the cart off the ground and brings it down again,” explains Shakeel Bharti, a mimicry artist and filmmaker. Bharti is striving to get the industry formal recognition as the Mollywood Film Association and Welfare Society.

There is also no professional choreographer, costume designer or make up artist. The actors do on-location improvised dance steps, a good hand at makeup does the job, and actors mostly wear their own costumes or rent one.

“I got my Ghajini jacket for Rs30 from a second hand shop and bought the Polaroid camera like the one Aamir Khan used in the film for Rs40. Since, the camera was not functional, we used a string which when pulled would push the photograph out,” says Bharti, lead actor in the remake of Ghajini. The movie, shot with a budget of Rs50,000 highlights social problems like sky rocketing prices of food produce and increasing taxes.

Set props and accessories are also sourced from second-hand shops. A green pasture is used for outdoor shoots and godowns double up for indoor shots. Here, even the family chips in to help: the wife cooks for the film crew, the son assists in the camera work and the daughter helps in designing costumes.

Double take
How close are the actors to the real stars? A painter by day, the lean Mahmood Shah is all of 22 but is already seven years into Mollywood. He started his career at 15 as a cameraman, shifted to editing and finally debuted as an actor as Hrithik Roshan’s look-alike in Khandesh Mein Koi Hil Gaya. Shah is not the only look-a-like, Malegaon has several of them. Sajid Ahmed, 35, who runs a food stall has joined the bandwagon of look-alikes as an Amitabh duplicate.

In the absence of any professional acting or dancing classes, the actors learn by scanning and diligently practising every move of the real stars. “From dancing and fighting to dialogue delivery, I’ve learnt it all from Khan sahib [Shah Rukh Khan],” says Shah Yasin, lead actor of Khandesh Ke Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.
Imran Ali Shah works in an ice candy factory. During winters, when business is slow, he slips into the shoes of his favourite actor Shah Rukh Khan. “When Khanji underwent a shoulder surgery, I too wore a bandage on my left shoulder,” states Shah, the lead actor in Mollywood’s version of Darr.