Odia filmmaker Susant Misra started his innings in filmmaking around the same time as Bengali legend Rituparno Ghosh. While Ghosh made his debut with Hirer Angti in 1992, Misra made his with Indradhanur Chaai (Shadows of the Rainbow) a year later, which bagged the Grand Prix at Russia’s Sochi International Film Festival and was also the official selection in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 1995.
Through the story of three women living in a rapidly transforming Bhubaneswar, it pits urbanisation and consumerism against tradition and culture. Misra recalls the challenges in shooting the film — the limited resources, lack of equipment and more. He went on to make two more celebrated features — Biswaprakash (1999) and Dharini (2002). One of the founding fathers and proponents of Puri’s cult Bring Your Own Film Festival (BYOFF), Misra also has three documentaries to his credit: Dhenkanal — A Multifaceted Paradise , Samarpanam on Bharatanatyam dancer Malavika Sarukkai, and his last film, Pearls of Wisdom, on Odia literature.
Dim personification
In his 20 years in the industry, the prolific Rituparno Ghosh made almost as many films, but Misra couldn’t go beyond a handful. “It is frustrating,” he admits, matter of factly. Nonetheless, he remains cheerful, unassuming and passionate about cinema. Far from the limelight, in his Bhubaneswar home, Misra is busy helping his father’s business and mentoring young filmmakers.
Misra is a personification of how Odia cinema has remained in the shadows. Just like its unheralded claims to inventing rosogolla.
My recent trip to Odisha, to attend the 9th Indian Film Festival of Bhubaneswar (IFFB), organised by the Film Society of Bhubaneswar, was a window into a cinema one has known little about other than perhaps the doyen Nirad N. Mohapatra’s 1984 film Maya Miriga. Odia talent outside the State made a bigger splash—actors Nandita Das and Sadhu Meher and directors Nila Madhab Panda and Soumendra Padhi spring to mind.
The lack of a film policy is to blame, says Misra. Others talk of a lack of subsidies and tax reliefs. There is also the lack of a market, dominated as it is by Hindi films. Most contemporary Odia cinema is emerging in the indie zone, more as a personal calling than an organised industry.
Arthouse by choice
Take Amartya Bhattacharyya, a 30-year-old Bengali working in Infosys in Bhubaneswar, who has been making existential, surreal films with his colleague Swastik Choudhury stepping in as producer-actor. His films, shot on days off from work, are like internal dialogues, probing the human mind. There is a play of colours and art forms, and an effort to balance logic and science, abstraction and formalism. Be it Capital I or the latest, Khyanikaa — The Lost Idea, Bhattacharyya’s beautifully shot, consciously arthouse films don’t betray the lack of resources he has to constantly battle.
At the other end of the spectrum are the issues-oriented, albeit artistically frugal, films like Pahada Ra Luha and Shuka Asuchi ,dealing withpolitics, class divides, environmental degradation, community and tribal welfare, and more.
What is evident is an appetite and passion, however muffled, for cinema. The IFFB was successful in putting together the best and most diverse of recent Indian cinema, with a special focus on the Northeast, to viewers in Odisha. There were many takers — especially among the young — and no-holds-barred discussions after the screenings. Indian cinema was opened up for cinephiles in Odisha, but hopefully it also opened up windows to Odia cinema for the rest of the country.
