It has been 21 years that Mahesh Limaye has been doing cinematography for films. In a chat with Nishant Singh, he shares that a deaf and mute girl animatedly expressing herself inspired him to direct his first feature film on special kids based on the real life of the protagonist, Gauri Gadgil
There is a beautiful sky above us, but we are too engrossed in ourselves to appreciate it. These special children are that sky and we don’t look at it often enough. These were the words of noted poet and lyricist Gulzar at the opening ceremony of the first International Film Festival for Persons with Disabilities (IFFPwD). Gulzarsaab suggested, “The festival should be called festival for ‘Specially Abled People’ because people like me feel handicapped after seeing such remarkable performances and energy of these special kids.”
Organised by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) and Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry in collaboration with the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), the three-day film festival for persons with disabilities is taking place at Siri Fort.
National award winning Marathi film, Yellow opened the festival. The film marks the directorial debut of Mahesh Limaye, who is known for his cinematography works in films like Dabangg, Fashion, Heroine, Corporate, Natrang, et al. The film explores a mother-daughter relationship and the developmental disability and behaviour of the daughter, who later surpasses everyone’s expectations.
Yellow is about a mentally disabled child suffering from Down syndrome whose mother wants to bring her up as a normal child, despite the absence of any support from the father. She separates from her husband and starts living with her child’s uncle. However, the child remains tough to handle, till she discovers her love for swimming.
Limaye talks about how the idea first occurred to the producers to make a film on this subject. “My producers and I were sitting along with these kids and there was this one girl who was deaf and mute. The way she was expressing herself to the kids, is what triggered the idea of a film on special kids.
It is a very special film for him because he devoted 15 months of his life to this film, out of which five to six were only spent on research. Their research proved vital in developing the script as well as finding the protagonist, Gauri Gadgil.
He explains, “While researching, we observed two things — one, that these people need a lot of positive vibes around them. Secondly, they hate sympathy. After this, we thought of making a film which inspires not only the special kids but each and every one of us. What we needed then was someone special who had made a mark, on their own. Gauri is that special one. She showed talent for swimming at age 10 while undergoing water therapy for her spine and her coach suggested that she gets trained professionally.”
Limaye has been working in the film industry as a cinematographer for over 20 years now but he decided to make his directorial debut with a Marathi film as he feels that Marathi content is really good. He had never expected the film to win National Award. He says that he never thought, “Let’s do a film, chal National award jeet ke laaye, thoda alag subject hai.” All that he aimed to do was to capture the beautiful moments that one gets to see in the beautiful world of persons with such disabilities.
He is now working on his second project, which is an untitled love story in Marathi. He reveals that Salman Khan is really keean to make Yellow in Hindi, so that is expected to go on the floors next year.
The article also got published in The Pioneer Newspaper – http://www.dailypioneer.com/vivacity/colour-me-yellow.html
