On August 8, film lovers will be treated to an unlikely spectacle in theatres as PVR Director’s Rare, in association with HumaraMovie, launches the Shuruaat Film Festival. The festival comprises eight shorts, which will be screened as an anthology film.
Chosen from a pool of 400 entries, the eight filmmakers have made shorts on the theme of ‘interval’. While Ankit Tripathi’s “No Exit” tells the story of a man who wants to escape life but cannot, Palash Vaswani’s “Interval 3D” shows what happens when a ghost comes alive during the interval of a horror movie. “Gatekeeper” by Atanu Mukherjee revolves around the life of a railway guard, whose only source of excitement in life is watching trains passing by and “August” by Shishir Jha is about a butcher who cannot move ahead as he faces a dilemma in life.
Over the process of production, these filmmakers were mentored by directors Anand Gandhi, Imtiaz Ali, Vikramaditya Motwane and Vikash Bahl. As the name of the festival indicates, it is a beginning; a stepping stone into the world of feature filmmaking. The experience of a theatrical release is likely to improve their prospects as future filmmakers.
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For Rukhsana Tabassum, whose 10-minute short “Bubbles And Stars” deals with what happens to two characters of a play during its interval, the mentorship process was like going to a new classroom, where initial bafflement gave way to informed understanding. Although she had only session with her mentor Anand Gandhi, it proved to be of immense help as his was a “very mature point of view”. While some of his suggestions added greatly to her script, he was also willing to listen when she defended some of her choices, Rukhsana says.
For Krishan Hooda, whose 15-minute film “The Last Audition” is about a “struggling actor who wants to live his dream while surviving the reality of life”, being mentored by Imitiaz Ali resolved doubts he had about various aspects of the film. “We discussed different points of view and what would appeal to and what would appear risky to audiences...He suggested that I keep the film open-ended so that the audience can create its own story.”
While Hooda is now working on the post-production of his feature film, he considers his experience in the shorter format invaluable as it has allowed him to experiment and learn. For “The Last Audition”, he was the script and screenplay writer, director, and cinematographer all rolled into one. An endeavour like “Shuruaat”, he adds, also liberates the audience from the tyranny of a boring feature film, as even if they do not like a short chances are they will enjoy the next.
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Rukhsana, an FTII graduate, who has earlier made short films and a documentary, believes on the other hand that the short film-feature film debate is a bit like the short story-novel debate. “There are certain ideas that can be conveyed only in a short film, and certain ideas you can do justice to only in a feature film.”
“Final Interval” by Aarti Bagdi and “Ayan” by Amrit Raj Gupta are the two other films in the line-up. From the eight short films, a winner will be chosen on the basis of voting by audience, and will get a prize money of Rs. 1 lakh, while the top two films will get a world premiere at the Ladakh International Film Festival.