That Bombay Velvet is Anurag Kashyap's most ambitious project is known. That it's a drama set in Bombay of the '60s is known as well. That it was shot in Sri Lanka, and not Mumbai, is no secret either. That the nine-acre south Bombay replica, complete with trams, art deco buildings, and an Eros-eque theatre, was built from scratch over 10 painstaking months is something that deserves to be known by more.
In a video that gives a glimpse into the making of the film, director Anurag Kashyap says that to tell the story of the city, he needed to recreate it from scratch. And so he did: from the red light area at Falkland Road to the glitzy Bombay Velvet theatre, he had it all built on an empty swathe of land in Tissamaharama, near Hambantota, Sri Lanka.
This six-minute video shows just what went into recreating south Bombay.
The scale of the production is mind-boggling. From the video below, we learn that the crew brought in 10,000kg of costume, 25,000kg of art material—much of which was sourced from Chor Bazaar—and more than 200 vintage cars for the shoot.
The other thing we learn is that whiskey bottles and Tupperware can be used to model an art-deco theatre. Thank you Anurag, we'll never look at Eros the same way again!
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