Laughing Club of India

Laughing Club of India is a funny, serious, yet entertaining documentary that takes place in India. This documentary is about a laughing club in India, where people come to laugh their sorrows away instead of crying, they share their problems and emotions. Some of them said the laughing club helped them in several ways like, a cure from a disease, makes them happy, makes them feel better about themselves, and laughter makes them think of the positives and not the negatives.

The people in this documentary had different situations or problems, but the same things they had in common, and in the sense of solution was the laughing club. Some of the situations was a woman who her husband died in the war, now she lives with 25 members of her extended family in one house. Another situation would be about a young man who has brain damage from an industrial accident, so the founder of the laughing club, a medical doctor, Madran Kataria tries to help this young man to get back to his old self again.

The shots this documentary varied, there were mostly wide shots, because frequently in every scene there was always a wide range of people, group, crowd, or population. When it came to some of the the characters' personal stories there were some medium shots, and close-ups. The scenes that i thought had the most beautiful shots, would be the scenes, where this particular lady does her laughing routine on her roof, because there were high angle shots that showed the sky,and from the shots as a viewer it showed you the city of Bombay.

I think i heard music about twice in this film, there is a lady from the laughing club that usually sings in her native language. The other time i heard music would be, when the documentary had a transition of a scene showing the city of Bombay, the people, streets, and billboards, when this was happening a fast paced music was playing in the background. I don't think lighting was used a lot in this documentary, because each scene was usually in the daytime, except if there were close-ups or medium shots then you would see the use of lighting. Costumes in this documentary wasn't really a problem for me, because i love Indian clothes, so i didn't have a problem seeing those colorful, gorgeous pieces of clothing over and over again.

The Laughing Club of India, is co directed by Adam Bartos, it's a happily lightweight saga about an unusual movement sweeping Bombay. It's mainly about informal laughing clubs, where adults gather together in the streets, or children at primary school, to act purposefully infantile: sticking out tongues, making faces like monkeys, and then laughing and laughing.