Bringing the Street Home – A Real Story Of Gully Boy

Mumbai: A new documentary on rapper DIVINE takes one through the life and times of the real gully boy. All of it started with the gully,” says rapper DIVINE in the latest documentary titled Gully existence through 27-yr-old Mumbai-based filmmaker and entrepreneur Akshat Gupte. “that is wherein I grew up… this is where I smoked and offered pot… that is in which I learned everything, this is also in which I wrote the rap that changed the whole lot,” he provides.

Meri gully mein, a collaborative rap through DIVINE aka Vivian Fernandes and Naezy aka Naved Shaikh, which found lots attention at the net in 2015, can effortlessly be termed because of the rap of DIVINE’s lifestyles. No longer handiest due to the fact the viral YouTube video stuck filmmaker Zoya Akhtar’s interest and stimulated her to adapted the rapper’s lifestyles right into an excellent movie starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt, however additionally because right here changed into a musician telling us the genuine story of his existence. No mask.

What turned into a thrilling, however, become that this turned into now not the same old Punjabi hip hop that referred to ladies, alcohol, and bikes. The music from the “gully” said police brutality, family apathy, lacking one’s mother who become seeking to make ends meet, struggles of everyday life whilst residing in the most important slum inside the world. It represented a tradition that India changed into missing, the type that once commenced in Bronx and Harlem inside the ’70s and took over the world. DIVINE introduced the road into the residence. This changed into in contrast to something all and sundry had heard before. It became genuine, authentic, and in the vernacular. The reality that the rap was in colloquial Hindi, helped propel the cause further.

As of now, DIVINE is a celebrity who has packed shows all over the U. S. A ., a Bollywood film on his existence, a track festival and manufacturing residence below his belt and the arena to conquer. Gupte’s documentary, produced by means of the red Bull Media house, takes one thru the journey of the real gully boy, who has rapped his manner to success, who once rhymed Ishq Bector with “fruit nectar” in a battle rap with the Indo-Canadian rapper.

Vivian Fernandes wrote a few gospel songs and have become DIVINE. Then got here Meri gully and songs with Sony song. Akhtar’s film got him the reputation he hadn’t even factored in. “all of sudden it doesn’t remember wherein you came from and who you were. You just right now go beyond all boundaries that society places in the front of you. Handiest art does that,” says Akhtar, inside the documentary.

“When I started studying his life, I realized how interesting it was. It was not just about being from the slums, it was about revolutionizing the whole hip hop movement in India,” says Gupte. But what goaded him to make this documentary was the fact that DIVINE’s sole aim in life was to bring his mother back. She was working in Doha while he and his brother were in school. They were often beaten up by their father who had a drinking problem. “Bringing back his mother was the single goal he had. That’s what makes it a very human story. You will find people who are revolutionizing music or sports, but this guy’s main goal was to work his way up to be with his mother. This was unique yet universal,” says Gupte.

He began to shoot in January 2018, just around the time while Akhtar changed into finalizing the idea of the movie. He decided to follow the rapper’s existence for 12 months and waited until the discharge of Gully Boy to look at what takes place to publish the movie. He followed him via his shoots and gigs — in India and overseas — places wherein he spent his time as a toddler and at home. The documentary consists of interviews with Akhtar, Singh, Indian electronic track manufacturer Nucleya, DIVINE’s high-quality buddy and filmmaker DJ Joel D’Souza, and Goa-primarily based song manufacturer Phenom aka Pinaki R. The 50-minute documentary is narrated by DIVINE himself as he is taking one thru the rigors and tribulations of his lifestyles.

Gupte has used transferring animations to describe the rapper’s beyond existence. “Availability of archival pictures in a documentary makes you sense like part of it. We had some (some sepia-tinted pictures) but plenty of his moments hadn’t been captured. It became my manner of recreating them,” says Gupte, who runs a manufacturing house, Supari films, and studied filmmaking at Prague movie college. His in advance initiatives encompass a short movie, Mary Had a touch Lamb, which becomes showcased at Cannes. It changed into “a mere undertaking”, a homicide thriller that “allowed me to study a lot approximately filmmaking”.
Years after he started capturing Gully life, the upward thrust of DIVINE has convinced Gupte of the tradition supremacy Indian hip hop is capable of. “(he’s) our OG (unique gangster). The mac daddy of the hip hop game,” says Singh, in the film.