Rinku Kalsy is disappointed she will be missing the first day first show of Rajinikanth’s Kabali in Chennai on Friday.
“I have tickets booked for Kabali in Chennai [for Friday] but the dates were changed and I won’t be able to go. But I’m planning to catch it here first day first show,” Kalsy told Gulf News tabloid! from London where her film on Rajinikanth, For the Love of a Man, is being screened at the London Indian Film Festival.
Kalsy directed and edited the self-funded documentary on the south Indian superstar and premiered it at the Venice International Film Festival last year. It has since been screened at twelve film festivals, including the Dubai International Film Festival. The film is going to the Indian Film Festival Stuttgart this weekend.
Fans queue for Kabali tickets outside a theatre in Chennai. Courtesy Twitter/KabaliMovie
The film follows fans of the Robot actor for whom the actor is no less than God. It shows how this adulation has become an integral part of their own identities, so much so that they forsake family lives for this one man.
“We were really surprised that there was no documentary on the phenomenon. It was 2010 and I had just finished film school and my friend and the film’s producer Joyojeet Pal offered to help with research. Five years later the film was ready,” Kalsy said.
The idea was Pal’s, who taught children in Tamil Nadu and was doing Microsoft research in Coimbatore, she says. There, he met children who were so insistent on becoming software engineers like Rajinikanth in the film Sivaji, which had just been released.
“I believe that this whole Rajinikanth fan phenomenon [can be divided] in three parts — the social aspiration, the brotherhood and the frenzy,” Kalsy said. “The background that Rajinikanth comes from is a big motivating factor. Had he been from a wealthy family or a filmy family [they feel] he wouldn’t have made it this big. But the history of how he started has fans looking up to him — you know, the ‘If he can do it, I can definitely aspire to do something similar’ feeling? I noticed this social ascendance during the shoot.
“Secondly, the brotherhood. [The members of his fan clubs] become ‘somebody’ for a few days in the village or town wherever they maybe in, when a Rajinikanth film releases because they are the ‘go-to’ people for film and event tickets and memorabilia.
“Then the frenzy bit. It is basically a party atmosphere throughout the showing of the film — the screaming, celebrating in and outside the theatre… It’s like a ritual and a lot of people go to experience a Rajinikanth film because of the fans, to be part of this frenzy”.
This frenzy has a lot to do with how people in Tamil Nadu react to stars, Kalsy says.
“There’s this part in the documentary where south Indian director Siva Ananthasubramanian explains how the whole Dravidian movement and political ideology of the Indian state also gave rise to atheism, which says ‘no God’. But it doesn’t say ‘no hero’. If you see for the last so many years, every elected chief minister in the state has been part of the film industry. They simply replace God with film stars. From this comes the rituals and adulation. Another person told us: ‘I don’t know what God looks like, so I’m going to paint Rajinikanth as God because to me he is God’”.
There are repercussions to this adulation. In one scene you see a man willingly hanging on hooks from a crane next to a poster of a Rajinikanth film. Then there’s G. Mani, a reformed gangster and a peanut shop owner, who says “Rajinikanth has control and right over the people… 60 million people are ready to listen to Rajinikanth”. We see Mani’s wife trying to make ends meet at home while he spends all his earnings on his “God”. He organises feasts for orphans and blood donation camps, spend on tickets, etc, even though he has a wife, as well as a daughter abandoned by her in-laws, at home.
But almost a year after its premiere, the film hasn’t made it to screens in Chennai. Kalsy tells us that it’s because she’s still in the process of obtaining a censor board certification and hopes to sort it out in the next couple of months. But she has received positive feedback from viewers at screenings all over the world.
“A lot of people think this will be a funny documentary but then they find it shocking, especially with the visual imagery. That’s been very interesting for me because I got really close to the fans when I was filming and am still in touch with most of them. [For me therefore] it was really important they don’t look like silly people because fandom is a very serious thing for them. Initially viewers do have a laugh because they are amazed at what’s happening, then realise they shouldn’t be laughing at them. But so far no one has said to me that the film shows something that is not real”.
However, no feedback has come from the man himself. Any plans of doing a feature from his side?
“I met his daughter during the Mumbai Film Festival last year. I walked up to her and told her I was doing this documentary. She immediately said ‘Oh we know about it’, because two heads of clubs who are in the film discussed it,” Kalsy said. “I was quite surprised when she said ‘Appa [Rajinikanth] and I are keeping a track of it’. During filming I was asked if I wanted to contact him, but at the moment I didn’t [see] the need for it as it is a small independent film documenting the fans and not really a biopic on the star. But, yes, at one of the festivals a gentleman did walk up and said the same thing, that I should do it from the other side now.
“What I have seen is quite incredible and I haven’t — in my knowledge — seen this with any other star. But I really appreciate their fandom and, no, I don’t think they are crazy at all — as I’ve been asked quite often. I just feel if there’s the same kind of frenzy for a political or a religious movement, and no one questions that, so why question this? I’ve learnt a lot through these people and in the process became a very big fan of Rajinikanth myself,” said Kalsy.
Don’t miss it
Kabali releases in the UAE on July 21.
