Rituparno shoots Ganpati festival for short film

Mumbai, Oct 9 (IANS) Bengali filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh sneaked into Mumbai with his cinematographer Abhik Mukherjee to film the immersion ceremony of the Ganpati festival for his tentatively titled short film 'Mangal Moorty'.

Reluctantly revealing the reason for his flash visit, Ghosh told IANS: 'I shot the Ganpati ceremony for a short film on Mumbai that I'm doing. It would be an outsider's view, in my case a Kolkatan's view of a city that can be so nurturing and also awfully cruel, specially to outsiders.'

The film has been partly shot on the streets of Mumbai and the interiors have now been designed on a set in Kolkata.

'I was keen to do this film. It gives me restricted space to make my statement on Mumbai. I've never done that before. Though I'm from Kolkata, Mumbai has given me so much.

'This is a homage to a city that's second home to me and so many other Kolkatans like Hemant Kumar, Sachin Dev Burman, Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Mithun Chakraborty whom Mumbai embraced so wholeheartedly.'

'Mangal Moorty' is part of a series being produced by two Mumbaites, Niyati Shah and Samrat Sengupta, who own a company called White Cloud.

Other filmmakers asked to contribute to the Mumbai bouquet are Anurag Kashyap, Revathy, Aziz Mirza, Kundan Shah, Saket Chowdhary, Manish Jha and Sudhir Mishra.