Lucknow: The first feature length film ‘Vice Chancellor of Chowk University’ made on Padma Bhushan Amritlal Nagar was premiered at the main auditorium of Sangeet Natak Akademi as part of the seven-day ‘Amritotsav’ organized by Documentary Films and Theatrical Trust (DFTT) and its partner Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts.
This film has been produced by Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts, Delhi and the writer and director of this film are Rajesh Amrohi and Savita Sharma Nagar. The photography, editing and background music of the film has also been done by Rajesh Amrohi. The background narration of the film has the voices of Jitendra Ram Prakash and Arshad Iqbal.
This film, made after almost two years of research and hard work, was shot in Lucknow, Banaras, Ayodhya, Mathura, Mumbai and many other places and apart from Rashtriya Vidyalaya, actors from Lucknow have also played the role of Nagar ji in it.
To bring Nagar’s life to life on screen, the directors of the film (Savita Sharma Nagar and Rajesh Amrohi) have also made a dramatic adaptation of many aspects of Nagar’s life, which was shot in Lucknow, Malihabad and Delhi. Along with weaving interesting and important stories of Nagar on a story, his major novels have also been depicted in the film.
Most of Nagar’s novels are written on historical background like ‘Gadar Ke Phool’, ‘Yeh Kothewaliyaan’, ‘Boond Aur Samudra’, ‘Shatranj Ke Mohre’, and some are even mythological like ‘Ekda Naimisharanya’. Artificial Intelligence has been used extensively in the film to portray such novels in an impressive manner. For example, in the novel ‘Ekda Naimisharanya’, Nagar writes that about 88 thousand sages meditated continuously for 12 years to understand what is the essence of life. The use of artificial intelligence and animation to depict such mythological pictures proved to be quite effective.
In this film, apart from many eminent litterateurs, interviews of eminent personalities from various fields were done, which include Lalji Tandon, Padmashree Yogesh Praveen, Dr. Sachchidanand Joshi, Narendra Kohli, Ramdarsh Mishra, Mamta Kalia, Nasira Sharma, Dr. Achala Nagar, Dr. Anil Rastogi, Dr. Surya Prakash Dixit, Dayanand Pandey, Dr. Sheeba Rakesh, Salim Arif and Asif Ali etc.
To attract the common people along with literature lovers, the language of the film has been kept simple and crisp. The film directors say that the language of the film is so simple that even the less educated and the person driving a rickshaw on the road will easily understand it. The film directors say that this film will be sent to film festivals around the world and at the same time, the film will be dubbed in many languages besides English to reach every corner of the country.
The film directors also told that since Nagar ji lived in Lucknow all his life and 17 August is also his 108th birth anniversary, they are very happy to do the first premiere of the film in Lucknow. Along with this, the chief guest Dr. Dinesh Sharma, Rajya Sabha MP. Dr. Anil Rastogi, Mukesh Singh President Indo American Chamber, as special guests released the coffee table book on Amrit Lal Nagar ji and also released the book Chand Ghati Ki Anaar written by Savita Nagar.
