{"id":245,"date":"2021-05-26T19:53:03","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T23:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/?p=245"},"modified":"2021-05-26T19:53:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T23:53:04","slug":"mehsampur-dir-kabir-singh-chowdhry-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/2021\/05\/26\/mehsampur-dir-kabir-singh-chowdhry-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Mehsampur (dir. Kabir Singh Chowdhry, 2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on September 11, 2018.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


One of the pleasures of film festivals is the exposure to films that one might not normally have access to, or that sit a little bit outside one\u2019s wheelhouse. Director Kabir Singh Chowdhry\u2019s Mehsampur<\/em><\/strong> (titled after the Punjabi village in which, as an intertitle card tells us, was the place where the popular 1980s Punjabi folk-singing duo Chamkila and Amarjot, whose innuendo-laden lyrics often offended religious groups and separatists, were killed in 1988) traces the journey of filmmaker Devrath, who heads to Punjab to conduct research for a film he wants to make about the once popular duo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real world and the fictional one collide, lines between the two are blurred, as filmmaker Chowdhry follows filmmaker Devrath, a fictional filmmaker making contact with real life figures in Ludhiana who knew the controversial singer, such as Chamkila\u2019s manager, Kesar Singh Tikki, his dhokla player, Lal Chand, and Surinder Sonia \u2013 who sang duets with Chamkila before he eventually teamed up with Amarjot. Devrath seeks these people out, but we realize he really hasn\u2019t done much homework. When Sonia asks if he\u2019s heard her duets with Chamkila, he tells her he hasn\u2019t, something easily achieved by searching on YouTube, for example. Devrath infuriates me even as Chowdhry compels me to keep watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And though Mehsampur<\/em><\/strong> purports to be about finding out about Chamkila, we never really learn anything of substance, as the film circles around the edges of the subject. Devrath seems to have done little real research on the people he attempts to interview for his film, relying on prurient questions and superficial information, on spurious re-enactments to get to the heart of what he thinks of as his \u201ccinematic breakthrough\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mehsampur<\/em> <\/strong>is at its best when it sticks to the subject of Chamkila, as ephemeral a subject as that is. That said, little details, like Manpreet (the actress Devrath meets in a hotel bar) asking Lal Chand how Amarjot wore her chunni (which has him arranging it for her in the back of Devrath\u2019s car), and Lal Chand commenting, upon arrival in Mehsampur on the events of the day Chamkila and Amarjot were killed \u2013 noting that he, too, had been shot in the thigh as he tried to get away from the militants \u2013 these small details shared by Lal Chand are incredibly moving. And stand in irony once again, because as Devrath goes around filming with the caretaker of the venue at which they were killed, Lal Chand tells his stories to no one in particular, and Devrath continues to focus on the most trivial of details \u2013 like what the caretaker served Chamkila to eat that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Devrath continues his research, we realize that he\u2019s always one step behind a big film crew from Mumbai making a film entitled \u201cChamkila the Legend\u201d. So we have a film, within a film, within a film, each defying film genres and blurring the boundaries of film. Which film about Chamkila is the \u201creal\u201d film? Which one will tell us Chamkila\u2019s story? Will any of them capture the legendary singer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part way through his journey of discovery about Chamkila, when Devrath first meets Manpreet, she is reading Proust\u2019s In Search of Lost Time, and she shares a quote from it with Devrath: \u201cThe only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director Chowdhry\u2019s film (written by Akshay Singh), occasionally tried my patience (especially in its latter portions on the road to Mehsampur), but I also found it compelling viewing. In in its own odd, absurd, occasionally surreal way, Mehsampur<\/strong> <\/em>gives us fragmented glimpses of Chamkila through the eyes \u2013 those \u201ceyes\u2026of a hundred others\u201d \u2014 of those who knew him, or who loved his music, and who still love his music. The only way, perhaps, to learn about Chamkila, is to view all of these representations of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This review originally appeared on Bollyspice.com<\/a> as part of the coverage of the 2018 London Indian Film Festival.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on September 11, 2018. One of the pleasures of film festivals is the exposure to films that one might not normally have access to, or that sit a little bit outside one\u2019s wheelhouse. Director Kabir Singh Chowdhry\u2019s Mehsampur (titled after the Punjabi village in which,…<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingMehsampur (dir. Kabir Singh Chowdhry, 2018)<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[309],"tags":[321,320,305,322],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-indian-film-festival","tag-chamkila-and-amarjot","tag-kabir-singh-chowdhry","tag-liff-2018","tag-mehsampur","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totallyfilmi.toutes-directions.com\/totallyfilmi-wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}