My Year of Prakash Raj

Some people spend a year
cooking Julia Child's recipes, or following all of the rules in the Bible, or reading books by people who spent a year doing something. My quest is to watch the 200-some films of South Indian character-actor-extraordinaire, Prakash Raj. (It'll probably take more than a year... and I'll post about some Prakash-less films here as well.)

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Bangla Snake Fight! (Nag Panchami Film Fesssstival)

My quest to watch a Bangla snake film did not fully succeed (lack of subtitles, really poor video quality, and other things to do proved too much of a hurdle.) But I did end up slithering down some interesting paths of internet video, which I will share here:

At first I set my sights on Beshea Vora Nagin,  but I was distracted at part 5, with this epic fight between the two snake-women:


It caught my attention because a) it's awesome, and b) my googling had found a youtube hit for "bangla nagin fight", so I was sure that it must be this scene from the movie.  But NO! It's a different, but very, very similar snake fight, from another film:


Two immediate questions, which perhaps Jenni can answer in the Second Revised Edition of the Filmi Snake Spotters Guide:
-In the first video the snake ladies writhe around head-to-head (like the snakes), but in the second they are feet-to-feet. Which is the correct snake-fighting method?
-In the second video, it seems that one of the ladies is sometimes a snake, sometimes a mongoose. Are mongoose-nagin-ladies a unique subspecies of Bangla films?

More searching turned up this song in which a child sings soulfully to a snake:


And this song, which is a more traditional "snake couple in love" song:


I also found Dui Nagini, which is posted in full on google video, in which an awesome lady, who I assume is the  Nagini, sports a snakey-patterned blazer, hotpants, and headband combo and rescues maidens from guys with bullwhips:

Looking for images from Dui Nagini led me to a small image of the dvd cover of Naach Nagini Naach Re--love the nagin/naach combination!
This led to more discoveries of Hindi films with nagin and naach in the title:

Naach Nagin Gali Gali                  Naach Nagin Baje Been

Definitely lots to look forward to for the 2012 edition of the Nag Panchami Film Fesssstival!

2 comments:

  1. Dui Nagini has just been filed under MUST WATCH. Blazer + headband= she's a 90s nagin!

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Beth I immediately thought of you when I saw that outfit!

    ReplyDelete

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