'Superboys Of Malegaon' Is An Ode To The Collective Legacy Of Homegrown Indie Cinema

Everytime someone asks me for my favourite film, I tighten up. It is a question as daunting to me as “tell me something about yourself”. I tie it straight to my identity and make sure I don’t misrepresent the complex human being I am by picking something common like Fight Club even though it’s brilliant. This wasn’t the case when I was younger. Back when things were simpler, I thought Hotel for Dogs was the greatest film ever, because I had bought a DVD of it and could watch it anytime I wanted. The experience of having that access and owning a movie is what made it special for me. Years later my taste may have grown in sophistication but the joy was definitely more back then. 

Supermen of Malegaon was the first time in a long time that the same joy of cinema returned to me. The documentary about a group of guys from Malegaon making their own spoof of Superman was screened for us in college by a professor that would become my lifelong friend. In a fairly orthodox college campus, he came in like a storm and blew us away by writing the worst swear words on the blackboard in his first class as a lesson in censorship. We knew then that we had found our own equivalent of ‘oh captain my captain’ from Dead Poets Society - someone who was subversive and revolutionary in the same way all art is. Over the course of 3 years the Mass Comm lab became the home theater of world cinema for students that would, by graduation, be forever obsessed with the power of filmmaking. 

A good dose of that admiration came from Supermen of Malegaon. Known for its handloom power mills and over 80% Muslim population, most of which reside in slums, Malegaon was painted in a new light in the 2008 documentary by director Faiza Ahmand Khan. Mumbai may be where Bollywood lived but Malegaon was where it was celebrated. The documentary gave us a glimpse of how adored the Indian film industry was through the lives of power mill workers who spent their evenings in video parlours after a long day at work. From a kid performing roadside sleight-of-hand tricks naming his pebbles after Sri Devi, Rani Mukherji and Aishwarya Rai to the Shahrukh Khan & Sanjay Dutt haircuts at the local barber, Bollywood flowed in the veins of Malegaon. Known affectionately as Maliwood, the city had its own industry powered by spoofs and parodies of not just Bollywood but Hollywood as well. Created on a shoestring budget featuring local look-alikes, Maliwood’s films were shot in the local Khandeshi accent that made them even more endearing. The documentary was Malegaon’s love letter to cinema in video.

But I will not be explaining Supermen of Malegaon further to you because I couldn’t do it with half the charm and passion that director Sheikh Nasir, screenwriter Farogh Jafri and the very star, Malegaon’s beloved Superman Shafique do it with, in the documentary. The same magic that entrances us modern day cinephiles, with the obsessive rants on filmmaking by David Lynch and Tarantino, is also what fuels Nasir, Farogh & Shafique who do it with a fraction of the resources. They do it simply because they love movies. 

This year the story of Malegaon ka Superman inspired an indie film called Superboys of Malegaon that's centered around the same love for film and the craft of filmmaking. Directed by Reema Kagti, the film resurrects the inspiring lives of Malegaon’s filmmakers for a new audience. It comes out in January next year and will be available on Prime Video after its theatrical run. Before you watch it, I recommend you to watch the documentary that film is inspired by. It will be a departure from Reema's film in aesthetics, tone and also format since it's non-fiction, but it will take you to the source material of the story about resilience passion and creativity that is the life of Malegaon's self-made auters.

The legacy of cinema in India is one that’s carried forward by cinephiles of every kind in this country; everyone from the viewers going in to rewatch Laila & Majnu after being bombarded by Tripti Dimri edits this year to the humble filmmakers of Malegaon. This legacy is also the undercurrent in the timeline connecting the 2008 documentary to the recent indie film based on it. Going back thousands of years, storytelling has been a way of sustenance for our species, guiding and empowering us all the way. Cinema as its evolved form continues to bring us all together whether you’re from Mumbai or Malegaon. On paper the two demographics might be worlds apart, but this folie-a-deux (or millions in our case) for a story well told; the experience of personal salvation through the protagonist unites us organically. We’re made equal by the flickering glow of the screen in front of us.

Watch Supermen of Malegaon below.

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