‘Magazine’: How Shubham Shevade turned a Maharashtra village into a dazzling Marathi indie

The marvel of cinema blends with the earthy allure of homecoming in the Marathi indie feature, Magazine, that quietly landed in theatres on October 23. Told with an inventive charm in its aesthetics by debutant filmmaker Shubham Shevade, the film departs from the familiar beats of Marathi cinema as it paints a colourful portrait of an urban teenager’s lively coming-of-age in the countryside. Its protagonist, Velu, is a privileged youngster living in Pune, whose search for deeper meaning in life takes him to his ancestral village of Dattawad, Maharashtra, leading to a rigorous transformation. The shades of Velu reflect the experiences of Shubham, who calls Magazine “a deeply personal film”.

“It is something that I have lived through over the years, but I didn’t know the story was hanging around in my mind,” says Shubham, who hails from Nashik, Maharashtra and has studied filmmaking in Los Angeles after completing his graduation in Engineering from Pune. Shubham, who later worked in LA for three years and made multiple shorts, says that people there expected him to tell stories of immigrants with Asian themes. “So, I thought if it’s all about telling my stories, then why don’t I tell my stories in my motherland?”, he says.

That’s when Shubham came back to India during the pandemic, and a wave of nostalgia hit him in Pune and Nashik as thoughts of “going back to roots” took hold in his mind. The it moment came when he visited Dattawad, the village where his wife and producer, Aparna Kulkarni, hails from. Shubham fell in love with Dattawad and began photographing different places, similar to what Velu does when he returns to the village in Magazine. “When I showed the photos to locals, they would tell me that they haven’t seen the village in that manner even though they have been living there all their lives. That intrigued me to ask what is it that they are not able to see, but I as an outsider can,” he reflects.

His gaze gently populates the visual dynamics of Magazine as Shubham points to lush green sugarcane fields, extravagant trees and a 100-year-old swing in an aged mansion with mesmerising awe. The filmmaker wanted his romantic outlook to extend to the visuals, which further defined his choice to create a sense of grandiosity and wonder with what is seen and heard on screen.

“I wanted to romanticise it so much that a strong feeling of going back to the village is created in the hearts of those watching. That’s not possible if I paint a sad picture, which will take people away. Instead, I wanted to portray the beauty of villages to all the younger audiences, who can then go back and experience the hardships themselves. But for that to happen, they need to first see the beauty too,” Shubham says.

The filmmaker saw that beauty in Dattwad and shot Magazine in the heart of village life. Before even writing the screenplay, Shubham started working on a storyboard with a basic premise, as he wanted to build a visually driven experience. Due to this, the film often feels like a series of snapshots stitched together from memory, exuding nostalgia through the dreamy editing style, worked over by Shubham himself. “I wanted the cutting style to be choppier with a lot of montages to create those fragments of memory,” he says. “It was a personal choice to give it that pace. If Aparna and I watch the film after fifty years, it would take us back to these three years that we spent in making the film.”

A similar unconventional approach pervaded the writing process, as the forty-five-page screenplay Shubham later wrote comprised forty-five scenes crafted in images without any dialogue. The lines were given to actors two days before the shoot as the script got developed throughout the filming, which further added on to the natural flow in conversations.

“While writing these scenes and dialogues, I was actively thinking of the theatre-going audience. If I laugh while writing a scene, it should evoke the same reaction during the shoot and then people will enjoy it in theatres. I had to unlearn a lot of things from film school to build that connect with audiences,” he says.

The film’s theatrical release, however, came at a chaotic juncture with multiple Hindi and Marathi movies battling for screens. Shubham was mindful of this and devised a plan to take Magazine to limited screens first and then increase shows based on audience reception. Even the entire making of the film was planned while taking a “calculated risk,” as the filmmaker maintains that there were no challenges along the way. His proclamation again mirrors Velu, who doesn’t have a conflict in his life.

“I don’t have a struggle story to tell. I cannot sell all of that. But I can say that we planned everything with coordination, and that’s how we strategised the release as well so that we won’t make any losses if the film doesn’t work for any reason,” he says, adding that there is little structure to distribution if a film is not backed by any studio. “We were quite delusional during the production stage when everyone told us not to make it. But we are quite realistic with distribution.”

Even within that realistic scenario, Shubham says they did everything to promote the film in their own way, similar to a big-budget movie, with trailer launches held in schools, theatre groups and acting institutes. Along with that, the film’s premiere was held at Dattawad, taking Magazine back to the roots where it germinated. The filmmaker says that the premiere was attended by more than 2,500 people under the open sky. “Everyone got quite emotional while watching a film shot in their own village. It was like a blessing for us,” he says. “Even if the real test began for us on October 23, we already felt victorious in that moment.”

Magazine is currently running in select theatres across select cities in Maharashtra