Local Kung Fu, touted as India?s first slapstick martial arts
movie and made with a paltry sum of R95,000, premiered at the Osian?s Cinefan 2012 to much applause and appreciation
?The sins of their fathers are visited upon their sons??the opening line of Local Kung Fu. Heavy eh? But don?t get deluded, this is no overture to a story of sons and fathers or other similarly hard-hitting philosophical renditions. It is about kung fu and, mind you, not just any kung fu story. It is, perhaps, India?s first slapstick martial arts movie. And the best part about it?it?s as low budget as it can get?at Rs.95,000.
Conceived, written and directed by Kenny Basumatary, Local Kung Fu, could be described as a perfect vehicle for this putative kung fu enthusiast. Any fan of the Hong Kong action genre will see the similarities between Basumatary ?s movie and a Jackie Chan, a Stephen Chow or a Chow Yun-Fat one, but any discerning viewer will also know that the stunts in Local Kung Fu are not embellished by technology. Granted, they do not look so visually stunning, but they look realistic and doable, unlike fight sequences where the actors glide, soar, hover, swoop across rooftops, or over mountains and lakes, in say Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or The House of Flying Daggers. The moves are insanely beautiful and breathtaking, but humanly impossible. Right?
Well, all those astonishing actions sequences are also possible because these are big-budget movies and Basumatary?s film is made with a paltry sum and shot with a Canon 550D camera. Says the Guwahati-based director about his quest for the money to fund his first movie, ?My dad was absolutely sure that he did not have a few million bucks stashed away in either his mattress or his potato fields…My mother didn?t have a few crores stashed away either. Should I look for producers and financiers?.. Instead of waiting for a miracle in the form of a producer who?d shell out R3-4 crore for my debut film, I thought why don?t I try to make one on my own with as little money as possible? I could do it in my home town, with my friends and family.?
One would think that finding kung fu enthusiasts in the dusty bylanes of Guwahati was as an implausible notion. Not for Kenny, he had an ?unfair advantage in this department?. ?My uncle is a Kung Fu teacher and two of my closest friends are black belts who?ve trained under him. And like Robert Rodriguez says, ?write your script around your resources?, we weaved ours around the characters rather than writing the script first and then finding the actors,? he says with a twinkle in his eye.
Though Basumatary managed to gather a motley crowd of amateur crew and shot the one- and-a-half-hour movie in a span of 100 days, he managed to deliver a finished product. A movie which was not only entertaining but could be considered an exemplification of the fact that good movies could be made with a small budget, notwithstanding its technical glitches.
The story of Local Kung Fu goes something like this: Charlie, the protagonist of the movie (played by Kenny), moves to Guwahati to win over his girlfriend?s family. But as luck would have it, he inadvertently runs into various obstacles. He has to deal with Bonzo, a wannabe under-18 don of the city, and Dulu, an actual mid-level don. What follows is a boisterous, Laurel and Hardyesque string of scenes, in which Charlie has to wade through to end up with his lady love. And yes, like any other comic movie, Charlie vanquishes the thugs for a happy ending, but not before he indulges in some scatological humour (he takes a trip to the chamber pot to relieve his queasy stomach before his climactic fight). One of the biggest pulls of the movie has been that even though it was localised and peppered with Assamese-based humour, it did not fail to connect with an outside audience, or for that matter any audience who loves comedy and, of course, kung fu.
The movie also made an attempt to show the facet of a city, ridden with corruption and extortionists. Basumatary says it was a deliberate attempt to give a moralistic touch, but not to be preachy. ?Laughter will get the point across, you cannot force it upon the audience. You can pass on the message with a few laughs and people will listen,? says this IIT Delhi dropout. Apart from being a filmmaker, Basumatary is also the author of Chocolate, Guitar, Momos, a light, breezy read, which has been doing considerably well. Adding another feather to his already colourful hat was his recent stint, though a small one, in Shanghai as Dileep Chaliha. For Kenny, films has been his calling since he was in Class VI and he says it was Terminator 2 ?that cemented this ambition?.
While it has been refreshing to see a decent humour-based movie from the North-East, with all its problems of insurgency and unrest, does this talented filmmaker plan to make any movie on such issues? ?It is difficult to make things on complex issues, but, of course, I would love to make movies on them if I have the right resources and means,? he says.