Sarah Jilani

So something Semben actually once said in relation to this is, cinema is our night school.

And I love that quote because he summarizes how film

Sure, it's entertainment and it's going to be about African directors and Asian directors expressing their personal aesthetics.

But it's also going to be film and political education for mass audiences at a time when things are changing rapidly, you know, 50s, 60s, mass independences across Africa and Asia.

It's India's Republic Day, January 26th, 2006.

And the film, Rangda Basanti, meaning the colour of yellow, which symbolises sacrifice, is being released.

There's a huge buzz in the air.

Part of it's down to heartthrob Aamir Khan in the lead male role.

But there's more to it.

RDB, as it's known, is temporarily banned.

Then shatters records during its opening week and becomes the highest earning Hindi film release during its debut.

Life has only two ways of living.

One, let what's happening happen.

Bear with it.

In that clip from the film produced by Ronnie Skruvala, you hear DJ, played by Amir Khan, declare that there are two ways to live, endure what's happening or take responsibility to change it.

It was a very new way of storytelling that in a very contemporary scenario, how you can use history as a trigger.

How you can use something from the past which comes to effect in the present and transform people in the present and perhaps teach them a lesson.

This was the first time that the young India woke up to a reality.

That's Kamlesh Pandey who wrote the story, but getting it onto the big screen would take sheer determination.

He had his script rejected, not once, not twice, but three times, and it would take six years before anyone would say yes to the project.