Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro

Two unemployed photographers, Vinod and Sudhir, open a small studio in Bombay. On their first job they accidentally record a murder: the municipal commissioner D'Mello is killed. Between the contractors, journalists and politicians trying to hide the body, the corpse starts passing from hand to hand. Kundan Shah writes and directs. Naseeruddin Shah plays Vinod and Ravi Baswani plays Sudhir, with Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur, Satish Shah and Satish Kaushik. It was financed on a very small budget by the state body NFDC. Its climax is among the most cited sequences in Indian cinema: during a stage performance of the humiliation of Draupadi from the Mahabharata, the corpse arrives on stage and the play and the reality collapse into each other. It runs close to twenty minutes and is built entirely on chaos. It did no business on release. It spread over the years through television repeats and copies, and is now regarded as the essential Indian black comedy. What it says about corruption, the press and the construction industry has not aged at all. Renu Saluja edited it, and the rhythm of the film is largely her work. Who it is for: viewers who like black comedy and want the independent Indian cinema of the eighties. Who it is not for: it is technically rough and the cutting jumps in places, and some of the humour is tied to the political language of its moment.