Shyam Benegal begins shooting for Netaji

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">KOLKATA: Veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal began the shooting of his "patriotic mission on celluloid" by breaking a coconut at the base of a tree inside Netaji Bhavan on Subhash Chandra Bose''s 105th birth anniversary here on Thursday.<br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Netaji</span>, the film which Benegal calls his patriotism unfolded on celluloid, would be ready by the time the nation celebrates the legendary nationalist leader''s next birth anniversary, the director said.<br />With the chilly January morning fog just receding, Benegal held a small ceremony in front of the tree as family members and admirers joined in to pay their respects to Netaji.<br />"This is the place where Netaji held so many important meetings and discussed so many nationalistic issues," he said.<br />Turning to the old silver Volkswagen on which Netaji made the ''great escape'', Benegal said, he could not use the vehicle in the film since it was not serviceable any longer.<br />"But I have found another vehicle which looks just like this one. I am going to use that one in the movie," he said.<br />Shooting began at the Presidency jail with lead actor Sachin Khedekar, who has a lot of television and Marathi theatre roles besides Mahesh Manjrekar''s Astitva to his credit, playing the ageing Netaji.<br />"I have a very clear plot in mind -- the last five years of Netaji''s life that we know of minus all this controversy over his death. The film will talk about his entire life but in flashbacks," he said. <br />Benegal said he had picked up upcoming Bengali actor Jishu Sengupta to play the young Netaji.<br />The filmmaker, who would be in Kolkata for three weeks for the shooting, said he was banking upon the Netaji Research Bureau and many independent sources in the city to be precise and accurate on the many events of Netaji''s life.<br />The depth of his personal research on the subject was amply demonstrated when Benegal heard with rapt attention the Netaji Oration 2003 on the eve of his birth anniversary last evening delivered by Arjun Appadurai, son of S A Ayer, minister in Netaji''s provisional government.<br />After completing the Bengal shoot, Benegal would fly off to Uzbekistan to shoot Netaji''s Kabul episode.<br />"Kabul was such a beautiful city but after all the bombardment it has gone through, it would be a film maker''s nightmare to shoot there now. I have chosen Uzbekistan instead to portray those days in Netaji''s life which he spent in Kabul," Benegal said.<br />He said Netaji''s disappearance from Taihoku airport in Japan would not be part of the movie. "But I feel that it does not make the work incomplete in any way since my movie stands for the spirit and values which the man epitomised."<br />The crew would finally pack up in July, Benegal said, and the film should be ready for release in January next year. </div> </div>