How Malegaon’s film superheroes flew low and scaled great heights
Malegaon’s homegrown movie sector became famous for its parodies. But as Bollywood makes it the subject of a new film, Mollywood has moved on.
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One recent evening, Nasir Shaikh pulled two carefully maintained albums out of a cupboard. One was filled with collages of posters and stills from popular Hindi films – with Shaikh’s face in place of the hero’s. The other contained scores of articles about Shaikh’s filmmaking career.
“That’s how it began – with copy-pasting and then editing the photos,” Shaikh told Scroll. The films that turned him into a cult figure reflect the same makeshift make-believe approach. They pay tribute to iconic Hindi cinema plots but spoof them too. And they were all made without Shaikh ever leaving Malegaon.
The bustling city in North Maharashtra is known for its textile and plastic recycling industries – and, to fans, its homespun “Mollywood” films. At its peak two decades ago, Malegaon’s Bollywood was producing scores of movies in a year.
Nasir Shaikh played a vital role in giving Mollywood a kickstart in 2000, when he directed his parody Malegaon Ke Sholay. The hyper-localised comic take on the 1975 classic combined homage with fresh imagination.
Shaikh’s chutzpah will be celebrated in a forthcoming movie by Reema Kagti. Superboys of Malegaon is a fictional depiction of Shaikh’s efforts to make his third film, Malegaon ka Superman. Says the official synopsis: “Driven by a passion to create a film for...
