India’s first documentary on comedy, ‘I AM OFFENDED’ to premiere on Culture Machine's Being Indian channel

Media Brief

Mumbai, January 22nd, 2015

Culture Machine - the Digital Video Entertainment Company announces its collaboration with Indian writer and filmmaker, Jaideep Varma to launch his new documentary titled ‘I Am Offended!’ across Being Indian’s digital properties on Youtube and Facebook. The 102 minute documentary presents Indian stand-up comedy in the overall context of humor and the culture of offense and how it all harmonizes.

The documentary is rather like a highly stimulating conversation with extremely bright and varied comic minds punctuated by some of the most interesting moments from their work, further contextualized by the culture of intolerance they all operate in. So, the humour, wit and energy of all these talents characterize the film overall and drive the narrative.

The film features prominent stand up comics such as Johnny Lever, Vir Das, Raju Srivastav, Varun Grover, Sanjay Rajoura, Aditi Mittal, Sorabh Pant, Tanmay Bhat, Gursimran Khamba, Ashish Shakya, Rohan Joshi, Rajeev Nigam, Rajneesh Kapoor, and even the legendary literary humorist Pu. La. Deshpande among others.

The documentary which is one of its kind on Indian stand-up comedy, will premiere worldwide digitally on 5th February 2015 under the 'Being Indian' banner. Known for providing outstanding digital video content, Culture Machine's Being Indian is one of the most popular digital video channel that offers entertainment for the internet generation. Being Indian will now have multiple banners under the brand that will create unique programming across genres. Being Indian Originals is a platform, which aims to give directors and artists a flexible medium to showcase their art. As the name suggests, the channel aims at taking a dig at the cultural stereotypes pertaining in the country. Adding to this exceptional array of content is I Am Offended.

Speaking about the documentary, Jaideep Varma, director of films like Hulla, Leaving Home and Baavra Mann in the past says “Humour has a particularly important role to play in this rather grim world we seem to have created for ourselves, and hopefully this film demonstrates that aptly.”

Commenting further on the launch of the documentary, Sameer Pitalwalla, CEO, Culture Machine, says “Jaideep is a power-house story-teller, his previous work, Leaving Home, made history with being the first documentary in Indian history to release nationally in theatres and we are stoked at making history again with I Am Offended, an documentary on a scene which has oddly enough come of age through digital video. It’s an ode to the scene as much as to our promise of delighting India’s internet audiences with cutting edge programming.”

In the end, the film is as much about humour and its mechanics as much a portrait of a modern-day young India, warts and all. The disquieting intolerance and smugness in Indian society today forms the basis of the context within which this new arts scene is examined. The film’s inherent edginess gives it a new take on humour in India.

Catch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bNBODHfWI8&feature=youtu.be

For further information, please contact:

Nishi Mulchandani

Email: Nishi@thinkink-communications.com

Phone no. – 9819095274