Kannada Sugama Sangeeta and theatre artist M.D. Pallavi and Shamik Sen Gupta’s Playgrounds was adjudged the Best Short Film at the prestigious Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) held from April 6 to 10.
The 18.08-minute short film has been selected for screening at eight international film festivals held across the country so far, besides winning gold in the Asian New Force category at 21 Incubator for Film and Visual Media in Asia (IFVA) Festival, Hong Kong Arts Centre.
Jigmet Wangchuk, cinematographer of No One Killed Jessica, handled the camera for Playgrounds . The story is woven around the child of migrant labourer in the booming metropolis. This toddler falls asleep in an auto while in a game of hide-and-seek. When the driver discovers the child, he sets about trying to return her to the parents. “It is a game of survival in a concrete arena,” says the log line of the film.
Playgrounds was made on a shoestring budget of Rs. 3.2 lakh and has been shot in suburban streets, low-income class neighbourhoods, streets, hospital, construction sites, and workers’ shanties juxtaposed against and separated from a massive building complex by a deep moat, emphasising the divide. “While in some of the locations we had permission to shoot, in several others we had to shoot discreetly,” said Ms. Pallavi.
It took some three months for the director duo to write the script. “We shot the entire film in seven days. Since the film commences in the evening and ends after midnight, we had to shoot mostly at night with very little artificial lighting,” she explained.
Interestingly the film has various languages – Dakhani Urdu and Tamil besides Kannada. “It is our intention to make a multilingual film to capture the authentic soundscape of the Indian urban spaces where you don’t hear one but multiple languages,” she said.
“We are surprised on learning about the award. We could not go to Los Angeles to receive it because of financial constraints,” Ms. Pallavi said.
