Dundhu Renjeev hails from a family of doctors, in fact, about nine of them. “Naturally, there was pressure on me to go down the beaten path,” she says. But Dundhu, perhaps the first woman art director from Kerala, clearly had other plans.
“Despite my background, my inclination has always been towards art. When my dad took me to the movies when I was young, he would introduce me to its crew as the credits rolled. So it was not just the actors that I learnt about, but, in a small way, about unseen faces too. By and by, I developed an admiration for behind-the-scenes workers in films,” says the 30-year-old over phone from Kochi.
Describing herself as “a self-taught artist”, Dundhu, who grew up in Taliparamba, Kannur, in fact, succumbed to family pressure and did enrol in a course in Yoga and Naturopathy in Mangalore after Plus Two, only to drop out after the first year to pursue her true calling. She then went on to do an animation course in Toonz Academy in Thiruvananthapuram before joining St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore, to study visual communications that “opened a lot of possibilities.”
Dundhu Renjeev
But the turning point was towards the end of her course when she landed an opportunity to join the sets of Dulquer Salman-starrer 100 Days of Love as part of her internship. “Actually, I went to the set with a blank slate, utterly clueless about what to do. I didn’t really speak a word for the first two days and I think it was only on the third day that the crew realised I was a Malayali girl,” Dundhu recounts. There, she came under the tutelage of her “mentor”, art director Nimesh Thanur, whom she later assisted in Oru Mexican Aparatha . Her other works now include the V K Prakash-directed Rockstar and a biopic on filmmaker John Abraham by Prem Chand, apart from a slew of ad films for some major brands.
But her début as an independent art director came with the 12-episode web series The ‘Other’ Love Story in 2016, which was followed by the crowd-funded experimental film Across the Ocean by Uma Kumarapuram and Los Angeles-based Nicole Donadio. It was Uma who later introduced Dundhu to director Prasobh Vijayan who was “specifically looking for a woman art director” for his female-centric revenge thriller Lilli that hit the screens recently.
In Lilli , Dundhu doubled up as production designer and art director, a project that “excited as well as challenged” her on account of its shoestring budget. “We had to crank out maximum output on a very limited budget. The huge roots that you can see growing on the wall in the isolated house where Lilli is taken captive in had to be set right everyday and still look perfect .Lilli had a dark theme and we had to choose a colour palette that suited the mood right from get-go,” she reveals.
A still from Lilli
Dundhu feels the fundamental skill-set of an art director boils down to “just hard work”, apart from a drive to do some research as the work requirements differ from film to film. “I feel an art director should also have a good sense of colour and fashion, be it architecture or haute couture. Depending on the project, the director’s vision and the cinematographer’s ideas, one must be open to experiment and mix and match,” the art director says.
Though quite a few women filmmakers have made the grade in Mollywood, Dundhu feels it’s the disinclination to venture out of “a set pattern and take a gamble” that prevents women art directors from coming to the fore. “Many women don’t want to experiment or are afraid of treading an unbeaten path. That has to change. It may also be due to a lack of exposure. There are plenty of courses in acting and direction but how many do we hear about art direction? It’s also deemed a thankless job since it lacks that ‘glamour quotient’ associated with acting and direction,” she points out.
Dundhu Renjeev
Though hesitant to comment on the current state of affairs of Women in Cinema Collective, Dundhu throws her weight behind the need for such an association. “When I am the only female member in the group, I have felt that some basic needs are sometimes ignored. From my experience, shoots in Bangalore were much more comfortable as they (set managers) arranged for proper caravans or e-toilets for the women crew. But, here, the arrangements may not even be hygienic all the time,”she says.
Two films, directed by Anuraj Manohar and Nikhil Premraj respectively, are in the pipeline and discussions are on for a couple of other projects too. Though Dundhu says she can’t really point out any inspirations, she remembers getting a chance to work with acclaimed art director Sabu Cyril right after her first film. “However, I backed out as I felt I didn’t really know much then to work with such a titan in the field,” she says good-humouredly.
That was when she was only cutting her teeth in a male-dominated territory. There’s no backing out now.
