The Ganpati Festival is widely celebrated through the nation but never more fervently than in Maharashtra.
It has become a norm for many Bollywood films to capture the essence of the Ganpati Festival in all its splendour but few would have captured the essence of the Ganpati Festival during the years 1981 and 1982.
Kunal Kohli Productions, Dione Entertainment and Adarsh Telemedia who have jointly produced ‘Vartak Nagar- the Story of Four Crows’ have left no stone unturned to recreate the magic of the festival from an era past. Says Kunal Kohli , “Vartak Nagar uses the backdrop of the great Mumbai mill strike and Ganpati is the underlying motif of the film. The film commences and ends with the Ganpati festival. However, the fictionalised narrative of the loss of innocence of four teenage Mumbai boys is juxtaposed between the Ganpati festival of 1981 and 1982”.
The films debutant director Atul Taishete also chipped in saying, “We shot on real locations with around a thousand junior artists every day. I believe we have never seen such scale of the festival on the Indian screen before. I had amazingly generous producers and they pulled no stops in giving the festival the scale it so deserves.”
Producer, Amit Agarwal believes that a film must be given all the support it requires and is rather pleased that in his maiden Bollywood production he has been able to showcase such a unique and relevant feature of our countries history, all the while serenading Lord Ganesha.
“Not only have we shot the Ganpati festival on a large scale, we also had to create a well choreographed fight sequence between the lead protagonist and antagonist against the backdrop of the festival. Therefore, we not only have the uniqueness of the Ganpati festival during those years, but also the grit and determination of two strong characters locked in a battle of ideologies.”
