Supermen of Malegaon (Malegaon Ka Superman) Showtimes and Tickets

Most of the population of Malegaon is crazy about cinema. With a crippled economy and twelve-hour power-cuts every day, films have become the principal way to pass the time. There are twelve cinema halls and twice as many video halls. There are fan-clubs everywhere. On Fridays, after the Jumma namaaz, there is a stampede outside the theatres. The old Agneepath, starring Mithun and Amitabh Bachchan, is still a favourite and played regularly in Malegaon. The Mithun fans will sit together on one side of the aisle and the Amitabh fans will sit together on the other side and there is a competition about who is louder. They set off fireworks inside the hall. The halls actually have 'pathake le jaana mana hai' written outside. The Mithun fan club has a little place of worship plastered with pictures of Mithun and a TV that only plays his films. In the middle of this, about twelve years ago, Nasir - who used to shoot and still shoots wedding videos, and used to run a video parlour- finally decided that he needs to make a film. He picked the biggest hit of all time, SHOLAY. Made on a budget of Rs 50,000, the film was a massive hit in Malegaon- it ran houseful shows for a long time. The famous robbery sequence was done with dacoits on bicycles trying to rob a bus. And it kind of set the template for the work that has followed. The film industry in Malegaon is a cottage industry, and these are handmade films, done on ridiculously low budgets, localized to Malegaon, about things and films that people dreamt up in their free time. As a result, there is an extraordinary degree of innovation- cycles used for tracking shots and bullock carts for crane shots. But the greatest trick the Malegaon filmmakers employ is their street-smart transposition of these famous films to local situations and problems. And now are many groups, with fluid and constantly changing crews, who continue to make these films.