Review: Cinema Marte Dum Tak
How Amazon Prime's new docu-series Cinema Marte Dum Tak brings out a subculture that was as ugly as it was charming.
Director J. Neelam directing her short in Cinema Marte Dum Tak.
Cinema Marte Dum Tak, created by Vice Studios and Vasan Bala gives pulpy Hindi cinema its due. It features four prime directors of the 80s - Vinod Talwar, Deepak Gulati, Kishan Shah, and J.Neelam as we get to see a behind-the-scenes of them making a film like they would in the 80s and 90s - with low budgets, small crews, and horror or smutty storylines.
The docu-series has an interesting take on pleasure and the gaze, an important aspect in film history, and shows how the audience enjoyed trashy pleasure which they sought within the safe walls of a cinema. Pulpy and prolific, the films during the 80s and 90s formed a subculture of their own with a distinct storytelling style and vocabulary.
The show interestingly does not look down upon B-grade and C-grade cinema, but defends its stance of it being cinema, which entertains people. Featuring Arjun Kapoor on a round table with these directors, the show brings the sensibility from main stream Bollywood. It shows dignity for the people from the industry, who have been disrespected and dismissed. The show is also a sense of tribute to the workers of the industry.
With interesting anecdotes and harsh truth bombs from the kind of cinema in that era about how inexperienced young women actors being exploited by the directors and producers, to actors like Harish Patel who talk about the kind of dialogues at that time, the series is brimming with interesting characters and stories from the 80s and 90s.
The docu-series also sheds light on the film distributors and the CBFC and how distrbutors would add footage right before screening the film for the viewers, which the CBFC was not privy to at first. It also features awe inspiring stories of actors such as Sapna Sappu, whose entire life and fortune had a role reversal for the positive because of this industry.
You can watch Cinema Marte Dum Tak on Amazon Prime Video.
