Surat, January 22: WANT to clean the world, to make it a better place to live in? Join Chakachak movement! With hazards of pollution as the theme, comes another inspiring piece from the filmmaker whose forte is satire. Known for incorporating humour though in an unconventional way, Sai Paranjpe is at it again. This time it’s children who take on the mantle of cleaning up the surroundings.

Chakachak (squeaky clean) is a take on garbage dump, fumes emanating from the industrial chimneys and hazards of polythene bags. Only difference being that the protagonists who disseminate the message on ‘environment protection’ are a band of eight kids who take up the cudgle by forming a chakachak toli. After enjoying the success in Pune and other parts of Maharashtra, Chakachak was screened for the first time in the Valentine Multiplex in Surat on Sunday. The film’s special premiere was jointly organised by the Sarvajanik Education Society and a Surat-based NGO Prayas for schoolchildren and college students and their parents.

Chakachak, directed and produced by Sai Paranjpe, is a movie about eight kids. In the two-and-a-half-hour film, a small group of children discover that there is no space in the city left for them to play as the streets are cluttered with mounds of garbage, the stench mixed with that of exhaust fumes from vehicles and industries.

The group of children meet and decide upon an agenda: no more environmental pollution. And a revolution is triggered - a Chakachak movement - with the children confronting the wayside spitters and litter-bugs by spreading the message of civic conciousness. Paranjape says, ‘‘Children are the best agents of change. They have no barriers. I have successfully disseminated the message of civic conciousness and environment protection through this movie.’’

Paranjpe said the movie has won many accolades in Maharashtra. The film has inspired the Pune Municipal Corporation to begin 400 chakachak tolis of students. These tolis report to the ward offices and have also taken up the segregation of wet and dry waste in Pune.

But she did not want the film to seem too pedantic.