BOMBAY: OUR CITY is an indictment of injustice and misery, and a call to action on he side of the slumdwellers.



Awards

Best Non-Fiction
National Award, India, 1986

Slumdweller to receive award
for 'Bombay Our City'
Press release, 1986

Special Jury Award
Cinema du Reel, Paris, 1986

Filmfare Award
Best Documentary, India, 1986

Reviews:
"This writer considers it perhaps Patwardhan's most mature and hard hitting film which exposes not only the ugly face of Bombay but the hypocrisy of some of its top authorities as well as the unbroken spirit of its slumdwellers."
Amita Malik - Statesman

"Simply one of the best documentaries I have ever seen."
Sean Cubitt - City Limits, London, UK

"Quite clearly, BOMBAY: OUR CITY is the best documentary ever made in India."
Khalid Mohamed - The Times of India

"Patwardhan gives us this story simply and clearly, with restrained passion, and it becomes, finally, appalling and moving."
Michael Wilmington - The Los Angeles Times

"A member of the U.P.M.C. (Upper Middle Class) with guilt becomes a sentimental socialist. A sentimental socialist with an excess of guilt, becomes a proto-Marxist and is dangerous. A sentimental socialist with talent becomes excessively dangerous. Anand Patwardhan's film on demolition of slums in Bombay 'Hamara Shaher' showed and discussed at the British Council on 3rd July '85 can perhaps best be understood against this background."
Shankar Menon - Financial Express

"Anand Patwardhan's HAMARA SHAHER about the unauthorized hutments demolitions in Bombay during these last few years, was the best viewing not only of last week but of this year -- and that includes feature films. The approach is multi-faceted and analytical. The case against demolitions comes out of the mouth of its staunchest supporters -- vigilance groups, municipal officials, police officials leading industrialists, advertizing clubs and highrise apartments' ladies clubs .... (The logic of the situation is driving the demolition supporters to Fascist attitudes.) I have often heard such talk at cocktail parties but never has the ruling class been caught with its pants down on film."
Iqbal Masud - Indian Express

"Does Patwardhan honestly feel that he is giving the "privileged" class a fair hearing, or is fairness not the purpose of the film? Whereas I had gone to see the film with an open mind ready to sympathize with the problems and tragedy of hutment dwellers, I suddenly found myself on the defensive -- or perhaps that was the intention of the director."
Meenakshi Raja - The Afternoon

Credits
Camera: Ranjan Palit, Anand Patwardhan, Pervez Merwanji
Sound: Indrajit Neogy
Editing: Anand Patwardhan
Production, Editing Assistance: Ramesh Asher, Sanjiv Shah

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