Five years ago, on Republic Day, Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra gave us a gem of movie in the form of Rang De Basanti (RDB). The impact it had on the people, especially the youth, is no secret with even the recent No One Killed Jessica acknowledging this fact. So, five years after its release, Rakeysh decided to keep a screening of this movie again for the entire cast at PVR Lower Parel, Mumbai on this 26th Jan. That’s not all. The print used for this screening was supposedly the same one which was used to screen the first show of RDB!
Rakeysh was happy with the impact which the movie has created but is still saddened by the fact that the issues which RDB had tried to fight still prevail today. He hopes though that these issues would be resolved soon.
The cast and crew who made to this event included Aamir Khan, Sharman Joshi, Atul Kulkarni, Kunal Kapoor(seen after a very long time), Anupam and Kiron Kherr, Cyrus Sahukar, Prasoon Joshi along with Kiran Rao, Ayan Mukherjee and others. While Siddharth was not present, Madhavan and Soha Ali Khan could not make it as they were both in London. Waheeda Rahman being in Bangalore and A.R.Rahman too being away, both of them were unable to attend this event. However, Rakeysh missed Lata Mangeshkar sorely. “When I called to invite her(Lata) she regretfully said she had another Republic Day commitment. Besides, she argued, she had seen RDB just two days earlier,” he said.
It was just not the director who seemed happy with this reunion. The cast of the movie felt nostalgic and happy to be a part of this re-screening. Atul Kulkarni, who had played the role of Laxman, tweeted on the popular site Twitter, ”Rang De Basanti completes 5 years today! Thanks Rakesh for giving us all a memorable moment in our lives, called RDB!! The whole cast n crew is watching RDB together today evening !! Don’t think would be back home till tomorrow morning just like the RDB days! “ Seems like that is what happened, because a dinner party was held by Ronnie Screwala at his place after the show. “Ronnie’s home was the nearest to the theatre. So we all moved there and kept chatting about the film till 5 in the morning. I got to know many things that I didn’t know about my film, things that the cast and crew had managed on its own while I was preoccupied with something else. It was an amazing experience to just sit and talk about a film that means so much to us,” Rakeysh said.
Rang De Basanti was distributed by UTVMotion Pictures and made about Rs. 136 crore.
Check out more pictures from the event.
