Big B multi-starrer inspires Mamata to emulate similar COVID-19 film

Prasoon Pandey’s multi-starrer short film Family has got Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee scurrying for a similar venture in West Bengal.

At her behest, actor-director Arindam Sil is now making a similar short movie featuring a bevy of stars from the Bengali film industry. The purpose is to create awareness about the COVID-19 protocols and also to raise funds for technicians and other daily wage workers of the film industry who have lost work due to suspension of shootings.

The make-in-home movie is likely to be released on April 14, the Bengali New Year day. It has been titled Jhar theme jabe ekdin (the storm will eventually stop)’, after a song by the same name penned by the chief minister.

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Banerjee herself decided the theme of the under-production film in which prominent actors like Prosenjit Chatterjee, Paran Bandopadhyay, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Abir Chatterjee, Mimi Chakraborty and Nusrat Jahan Ruhi among others will be sharing screen space.

Like the Bollywood production, this movie too is being shot without any actor stepping out of home, maintaining social distance.

Sharing his experience with the media, Sil said he had never done anything like this in his career, where the entire movie is being shot by different persons in different locations without the co-actors getting to face each other.

It took two days to finalise the script as per the theme suggested by the chief minister and then all the actors were briefed over video calls about their role, from which angle they should take their shot, and other nitty-gritties, he said.

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Veteran actor Paran Bandopadhyay has already sent his footage, showing much enthusiasm in the venture.

Apart from sending across the social message on COVID-19, those behind the project also aim to raise at least ₹50 lakh from the movie. The proceeds will go to the special fund created to help about six thousand technicians and other daily wage workers of the industry who took a huge beating due to the cancellation of all shootings for an indefinite period.

The junior technicians of the industry have already received a one-time aid of ₹4,000 each from the ₹52 lakh the industry members had raised.

Prasoon Pandey’s four-and-a-half-minute long multilingual production features biggies from Hindi as well as other language movies, an idea Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor chipped in with to make the movie pan India.

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Apart from Alia and Ranbir, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajinikanth, Mohanlal, Mammootty, Chiranjeevi, Priyanka Chopra, Diljit Dosanjh, Sonali Kulkarni, Shiv Raj Kumar and Prosenjit Chatterjee were part of the project.

Family tries to raise awareness about the importance of social distancing during the COVID-19 outbreak and funds for the jobless wage workers of the film industry. The movie starts with Big B looking for his lost “kale chasma”, which led to a search trail.

“The back story is incredible. Amit ji‘s portions were shot by Abhishek. Nick Jonas shot Priyanka’s segment, Rajinikanth ji‘s was shot by his daughter Soundarya. Ranbir and Alia went behind the camera for each other. Everyone was so gracious. They didn’t come into the frame, but they were simply helping. They were so selfless,” Pandey recently told a news agency.