Bold and the beautiful

[Shana A]

Bold and the beautiful
Asha Kasbekar
Friday, November 20, 2009 0:48 IST

http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/main-article_bold-and-the-beautiful_1313944

Although the recent MAMI film festival came in for a lot of criticism over the management of the event, there can be no denying that it provided a magnificent platform for Marathi film-makers. On offer was an interesting array of films from first-time, as well as seasoned, directors that covered a wide variety of genres. Nevertheless, there was one perceptible query underlying all these disparate films and that was -- what does it mean to be a man or a woman in present-day India?

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But perhaps no other film addresses the issue of masculinity with as much directness as Ravi Jadhav's Natarang. When a landowner mechanises the irrigation to his fields, Guna, a dirt-poor landless farmer decides that he and his unemployed fellow workers should chance their luck by becoming stage performers. He forms a Tamasha troupe, but with no one willing to take on the character of the 'nachya', the very masculine and virile Guna, transforms himself into a female impersonator.