The makers of upcoming film – Stanley Ka Dabba – held a special screening in Mumbai on Thursday. The movie is releasing today, on 13th May, 2011 and is believed to be a heartfelt film. This simple story of a school student is about the love, insecurities and innocence of childhood.
Actress Divya Dutta, who plays Stanley’s teacher in the movie said, “Making the film was a beautiful process of unlearning and going back to childhood. Rosy Miss is the teacher all the boys look at and make sweet little cards for. It was delightful to be around nine-year-olds who act their age, unlike the children you see in advertisements and other movies who have grown too matured.”
Director Amole Gupte, who also plays an important role in the movie, is also very excited about it. He shot the film in his own old school, Mumbai’s The Holy Family High School in Mumbai. “It all started off as a Saturday extra class for theatre and drama. Nobody was forced to come; it was voluntary and kids came because they enjoyed themselves there. I never gave the kids a script, the scene was narrated to them like a story and they came up with the dialogues. There were no special lights used and we shot the entire film with a Cannon 7D handycam.”
The crew of Stanley Ka Dabba includes just five more people besides Amole Gupte – Deepa Bhatia, two volunteers and Divya Dutta. Mr. Gupte thinks that in today’s movies, children are no longer treated as children. He said, “Children in movies are not treated like children. They are pushed to the extremes by their parents; they miss school; they miss being around kids of their own age; they lose out on their childhood.”
He added, “It is against the law in the US to shoot with a kid for more than five hours, but in India people make excuses, saying that there are tutors on the set. How much do you want the kid to do? Shoot for 12 hours and study mathematics and physics in between? We have an animal rights person on the set monitoring you if you are working with an animal but in the case of children, we do not have a basic law that is followed in order to keep their childhood intact.”
Amol says that he is completely against such practices and that’s why he shot for only 5 hours a day and that’s also only on Saturdays with the children. It looks like Bollywood is finally thinking about giving its youngest workers their due.
