Bobby Bedi, one of India’s most successful film producers, unveiled a powerful multinational production slate ranging from dance documentary to soaring fantasy.
Speaking at a private event on the sidelines of the International Film Festival of India, in Goa, Bedi introduced “Mudras,” the journey of a Spanish dancer who travels to India in the 1980s and finds her form and identity in a blend of Flamenco, Bharat Natyam and Kathakali. More than 20 years later, the woman’s daughter makes a similar journey but emerges with very different results.
Currently in post-production the feature documentary produced is by Bedi and Anna Saura through Bedi’s Contentflow Studios, with Bedi and Maria Salgado co-directing. Bedi described the film as “a story of two ladies, two countries two cultures and two generations, exploring dance, exploring themselves and discovering themselves.”
The company is in pre-production on “Bandit Queen MP,” a title that builds on one of Bedi’s biggest early career successes “Bandit Queen.” It involves a Phoolan Devi, a woman who emerges from a 12-year stretch in jail, against the odds succeeds in becoming a member of parliament, campaigns for greater women’s representation and is assassinated.
“Obviously, this is set at a time when the country was not ready for [women’s political representation], though since parliament has allocated seats for women,” Bedi said. “We hope this film will make sense to anyone who wants to break the glass ceilings that exist in many parts of life.”
Pitched simply as a “gender bender,” Bedi introduced “Lala & Poppy,” a pre-production feature about a transsexual man and a transsexual woman who become lovers. “Will this world allow two trans people to love and to live?” said Bedi.
Ambitious in a different way is “Nasruddin Hoja,” a project that was hatched by Bedi, Raami Malek and the multi-Oscar-winning musician A.R. Rahman. In development for a year now, the film project is a musical journey of a 13th century mystical character renown from Turkey to China for his wit and wisdom, traveling in times of the crusades and the Mongol invasion. The project is expected to be budgeted at more than $20 million and is being produced in partnership with VFX and facilities giant Technicolor.
It will use a combination of live action shooting in desert landscapes with the rest of the environments and backdrops created digitally. Technicolor will do the entire pre-visualization of the film.
“Artists & Assassins,” a film that is currently in development and will be pitched next month at the Asia Television Forum in Singapore, is the story of an artist finding his art, love and life in Mexico’s art world.
Structured as a Spain-India coproduction, the film recounts the journey of a young deaf Indian painter who goes to Mexico in the 1950s to train under David Seguiros and ends up befriending Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera during their tumultuous relationship and Leon Trotsky’s assassination.
Also at development stage is “Auto Bhagwan,” a real-time thriller on three wheels. The three wheels refer to an auto-rickshaw driver who picks up three passengers and has three adventures in the film’s two-hour duration.
“Mansur” is Bedi’s first venture into production in Saudi Arabia. Admitting that it is difficult to know which films might work in this fast-developing market, Bedi says that the film is an Arabic-language adaptation of his catalog-title, “Maqbool,” a film which was itself an Indian retelling of William Shakespeare stage play “Macbeth.”
With Rahman again, Bedi is in advanced development on “The Flowering Tree,” a musical fantasy that the showman claims “is as relevant today as ‘Avatar’ was in its day. Based loosely on a poem by AK Ramunajam about a girl who is temporarily transformed into a tree so that its flowers can be harvested and sold to support her family. “The story is simultaneously about gender, discrimination and the environment,” said Bedi.
Bedi’s credits include some of the landmark titles of Indian cinema, including Shekhar Kapur’s international breakthrough film “Bandit Queen” (1994), Deepa Mehta’s controversial “Fire” (1996), Rani Mukerji-starring relationship drama “Saathiya” (2002), Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2003 “Maqbool,” Stanley Tong’s Jackie Chan starrer “The Myth” (2005) and Gurvinder Singh’s Rotterdam title “Crescent Night” (2002).
This year, Bedi has also earned a credit as the organizer of the new content market backed by Frames.