Jubilee: Prime's New Series Is Making Baby Boomers, Gen Xs & Millennials Nostalgic

Have you watched Jubilee yet? It is a recent web series released on Amazon Prime Video starring Aditi Rao Hydari, Sidhant Gupta, Prosenjit Chatterjee, Wamiqa Gabbi, Shweta Basu Prasad, Ram Kapoor, Aparshakti Khurana, Nandish Singh Sandhu and Arun Govil among others.

The series revolves around Hindi cinema and its development after the partition of India in 1947. While the captivating storyline unveils the dark side of fame, name, power and exposure, it is also a nostalgic ride for Baby Boomers, Gen Xs and Millennials.

From fashion to instrumental props, it will leave you perplexed to see every actor’s performance par excellence. Take a ride through the past with us and see what connected us with a premise set around the Independence of India.

Vinyl Recorder

A vinyl recorder was one of the ways people kept themselves entertained and film stars connected with their fans. It was a regular in the old black and white and coloured Hindi films. However, as the times changed, it got replaced by new inventions.

For people who owned a vinyl recorder or used to wait for prominent song records to hit the market, its picturisation on the screen hit a cord with them.

Radio Being The Source Of News

In older times, when television was nowhere in sight in India, people used to get all their information via radio, especially All India Radio. Whether it was partition, riots, new movie releases or day-to-day updates, people used to switch to channels and sit beside the radio to keep themselves updated on current affairs.

Rotary Dial Telephone

The rotary dial telephone was one of the amusing things in the house. Most millennials felt nostalgic to see it on the screen. Those who had access to it, often found it fun to dial. Each time you want to press a number, you have to rotate the dial. For some reason, it used to be a game for kids.

Makeshift Screens

As mentioned in the series, the silver screen existed in big cities in India. In rural areas or interior parts of India, people used to create makeshift screens using a white cloth piece and casting a film on it. Men, women and kids of communities used to gather in a common area and watch a film.

Film Rolls & Negative

In the digital age, Gen Zs would never know the struggle of creating a portrait or video from negatives. Now things are easier. You can click multiple images at the same time, pick the ones that seem nice to you and delete the ones you don’t want to keep.

However, as shown in the series, it used to be a difficult task to create pictures and videos using film reels. In one of the scenes, Madan Kumar aka Binod Das, played by Khurana, had to cut negatives and join to make a reel that would showcase his talent in a screen test which was initially destroyed by Sumitra Kumari.

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Black & White Screen

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Baby Boomers and Gen Xs have seen many films on the black-and-white screen. The first coloured film hit theatres in 1937 only. However, black and white films dominated the screens.

It is nostalgic to see such clips in the series. The music is also slow with a little drama added to it. Jubilee showed how songs developed from being in still frames to moving ones. It was an insight into how Indian cinema developed over time.

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Fashion

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One of the ways we feel connected to the series is through its fashion statements made by lead actors. Aditi Rao’s elegant ethnic collection of docile Western picks with neat hairdos reminded us of Devika Rani. Her character Sumitra was based on her.

Gabbi played Nilofer, a prostitute who tried her hands at acting after the partition. She wore classic salwar kameez when shooting for the film. However, in her everyday life, she wore outfits that made everyone crazy in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The high-waist pants paired with shirts, collared dresses and short hair set nicely in place. In fact, men were also styled in attire that was specific to the times.