Supermen of Malegaon (Region 1 Import DVD)

It has been said that the movies are a universal language, but it seems there are an awful lot of local dialects, and folks familiar with genre cinema from around the world have run across Indian, Chinese or Turkish remakes of popular American films that put a decidedly different spin on familiar stories. Filmmaker Faiza Ahmad Khan offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a threadbare adventure story for the Muslim community in the Indian city of Maelgaon in this documentary. Wedding photographer and aspiring filmmaker Shaikh Nasir has been given a budget of $1,200 to shoot a local remake of SUPERMAN, but lack of money and experience aren't the only things that set this version apart from the original. In this case, Superman is skinny as a rail (the producers imagine he'd be ill after breathing so much pollution while flying through the air), the director attempts to throw in as many explosions as possible and shooting comes to a standstill when the production's only camera is dropped in a river. But Nasir and his ragtag crew set out to entertain, and for better or worse that's just what they do. SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON received its North American premiere at the 2009 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.