Film Notes: Patang and An Interview with Prashant Bhargava
By Kamla Bhatt • Jun 15th, 2012Category: Books, Movies, Music, Televison, Diaspora, Film, India, People, Podcast, YouTube Videos
Prashant Bhargava’s directorial debut Patang (The Kite) releases in the US on June 15, 2012, and towards the end of the month in San Francisco bay area.
Set in Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India, Patang has a slow, unhurried quality, where the characters “live their lives on the screen.” Chicago-based Indian-American filmmaker Prashant captures the rich and complex interaction of an extended Indian family in a low-key manner. Patang showcases old Ahmedabad in a way that probably no no other feature film has ever done before. Set against the annual kite festival that takes place in January of every year, Patang is shot mostly in the old quarters of Ahmedabad.
New Delhi-based businessman Jayesh (Mukund Shukla) takes his daughter Priya (Sugandha Garg) to visit his old family home, a crumbling edifice. Living in the old ancestral home are his mother (Pannaben Soni), his widowed sister-in-law Sudha (Seema Biswas) and her children. As the film unfolds you discover there are some old, unresolved family issues simmering below the surface that provides the tension element in the narrative.
I thought the film captures a city and family in transition in this new and emerging India in a very interesting way. The change is so infinitesimally small on a everyday basis that nobody notices it and I guess that is one of the highlights of the film.
The performance by Seema Biswas, Sunandha Garg and Nawazuddin Siddiqui need a special mention. For some inexplicable reason Biswas, who is a fine and nuanced actress has appeared in very few films. She appears to be a favorite among a few directors like Shekar Kapur, Prashant Bargava or Dilip Mehta, who cast her in Cooking With Stella.
Patang is slow, and at times resembles a documentary and that is because of the rich details embedded in almost every frame. Prashant spent a lot of time observing and researching for the film and that is reflected in the final product. What is a pleasant surprise in the film is the choice of music, which includes a mix of cold classic songs and new, modern numbers.
Patang was featured in San Francisco’s 3rd Eye Fesitval of 2011. Here is an audio interview with Prashant, who takes us behind the scene and shares how the made the film in Ahmedabad. An engineer from Cornell University, Prashant worked in the technology sector before turning into a filmmaker.
Cast: Seema Biswas, Sunandha Garg, Mukund Shukla and Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Directed: Prashant Bhargava