Rituparno Ghosh shooting a short film on Mumbai 
By Subhash K. Jha, October 3, 2007 - 17:53 IST
Back in Kolkata from Toronto after gathering glory and raves for The Last Lear, Rituparno Ghosh sneaked into Mumbai last week with his regular cinematographer Abhik Mukherjee to film the immersion ceremony of the Ganpati festival.
Reluctantly revealing the reason for his flash visit into the thick of Mumbai's most vaunted festivity Ritu says, "I shot the Ganpati ceremony for a short film on Mumbai that I'm doing. It would be an outsider's view, in my case a Kolkatian's view of a city that can be so nurturing and also awfully cruel especially to outsiders."
Ritu's film tentatively titled Mangal Moorty, has been partly shot on the streets of Mumbai. The interiors have now been designed on a set in Kolkata where Rituparno is busy shooting and chuckling over the irony of shooting a film on Mumbai in Kolkata.
"I was keen to do this film. It gives me restricted space to make my statement on Mumbai. I've never done that before. Though I'm from Kolkata, Mumbai has given me so much. This is a homage to a city that's second home to me and so many other Kolkatians like Hemant Mukherjee, Sachin Dev Burman, Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Mithun Chakraborty whom Mumbai embraced so wholeheartedly."
The film is a part of a series being produced by two Mumbaiites Niyati Shah and Samrat Sengupta who own a company called White Cloud. Other filmmakers asked to contribute to the Mumbai bouquet are Anurag Kashyap, Revathy, Aziz Mirza, Kundan Shah, Saket Chowdhary, Manish Jha and Sudhir Mishra.
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