Paani: a curtain raiser

Taking note of this, internationally acclaimed Indian film director Shekhar Kapoor announced his next venture Paani to be made in English and Hindi.

To be produced by celebrated Hollywood moviemaker Barrie Osborne of the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings fame, the US $ 20-million project Paani is set over 15-20 years in a city with a population of nearly 20 million. An acute shortage of water triggers a war between those who have the resource and use it as a tool of exploitation and those who do not.

Kapoor shot into worldwide fame through his previous feature film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett in 1998.

According to him, part of the proposed film will have an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The aim is to use the love story as a tool to send his message across easily.

How did Kapoor hit on the idea of making a film on water? 'I was coming down from a friend's flat in Malabar Hill (a posh locality of Mumbai) where they have a swimming pool and then there was a slum close by where people have to wait for hours to get water. That's where I got the idea of the movie,' he said.

In choosing the subject for Paani, the director admits he is tending to take on the role of an activist of developmental economics.

Paani will mark the return of Kapoor to Hindi films after a fairly long time. He directed his first feature film Masoom (starring Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi) in 1983 before going on to make Mr India in 1987 and Bandit Queen (featuring Seema Biswas in the role of late dacoit-turned-politician Phoolan Devi) in 1996.

Plagiarism charges
Reports are afloat that that the producers of Dev Benegal's Split Wide Open were planning to sue Kapoor for US $60 million over the latter's film Paani .In Benegal's words :'Terms like 'water mafia' have surfaced in his work. Furthermore, visuals that seem to be from my film were made into posters (for Paani) and shown at Cannes .'

Filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor on Wednesday flatly denied charges of plagiarism levelled by director Dev Benegal, calling them '100 per cent not true".

He explained that the posters for Paani were designed following a shoot conducted by him and his art director Nitin Desai in the slums of Dharavi in Mumbai.

'The three designs that were displayed selectively as posters at the Cannes festival in May 2003 were adapted from approximately 100 photographs I had personally shot in Dharavi in March,' Kapoor said in a statement.