'Deham only for urban audience, won't disappoint'

Subhash K Jha

He calls it his "first social science fiction".

One of India's most adventurous directors, Govind Nihalani is ready to release Deham. The film releases in May.

A terse, taut and compelling tale set in Mumbai in the year 2022, Nihalani's Deham (which means 'body' in Sanskrit), adapts journalist-cartoonist-playwright Manjula Padmanabhan's play, Harvest on screen.

With candid directness, Nihalani, whose last film, the commercially designed Thakshak was released nearly two years ago, admits that Deham is an absolutely offbeat experiment with prophetic truth. "It is a very dark film and is in the English language. It is certainly not meant for non-urban audiences. They wouldn't know what to make of the film's sub-texts about technology being the new tool of subversion and colonization in the third world countries."

Unusually charged and excited about his new work, Nihalani says he has always made the cinema he has felt like. "When I read Manjula Padmanabhan's play, I immediately knew I wanted to make a film out of it. It goes into a very disturbing and dangerous aspect of our lives: international trade in human organs."

Deham features some of the most fascinating digital effects ever tried in Hindi cinema. After the recent 16 December (directed by Mani Shankar and starring Milind Soman, Dipannita Sharma and Danny Denzongpa), which went hi-tech with a bang, Nihalani's film is poised to take Indian cinema further into areas of technological advancement.

The director is pleased with the results he has achieved in the film. "During this film I got wildly experimental. The film required a fair amount of special effects. Since we couldn't afford to get them done abroad, they had to done here [in India]. This was the first time that I worked on a film with special effects. Everyone in our crew, including me, learnt on the job. Deham was delayed only because we had to get the digital effects right."

The film stars Kitu Gidwani and Joy Sengupta, both known faces on television but unfamiliar to moviegoers. Nihalani says he has no apprehensions about the film's lack of star appeal or its unwonted theme and treatment. "Deham isn't a film for the mass market. It is targeted primarily at the metropolitan and other urban centres, where the uneasy relations between the first world and third world countries that my film addresses, can be understood."

The director feels that with the rise of multiplex theatres in Mumbai a diversified audience is ready to take any movie experience. "Deham won't disappoint my audience, that is for sure," promises Nihalani.