A team of students from Chennai has made its way to the Cannes Film Festival, 2015 to be held next month in France. Their film His Girl , a story on transvestism, has been selected for the Cannes Short Film Corner. The story evolves through the eyes of a boy, who has strong views on art and culture and tries to justify why he is a transvestite. “The film shows that his understanding of art is completely different from the common perception,” says director Shanmuhananth Selvaraj. When asked what made them come up with this idea, Shanmuhananth says, “differences are not appreciated in our society, they are always looked down upon. I wanted to portray the feelings of transvestites rather than focus on the perspectives of society.”
The team started work on the movie in early 2014 and submitted their entry in January 2015. “With limited funds and limited people to work on it, it was a great challenge and involved a lot of study and processing. Most of us were from different fields but with common interests; we had our difficulties, but it was also a fun experience,” says cinematographer Dhivya Ravishankar.
The team strongly believes that their efforts will pay off. “Before starting the shoot, we were clear about the idea, confident about the script, all the paper work was done thoroughly, we were sure that our movie would be selected because we portrayed the different colours of society. It was unique in its own way. Of course, being selected is like an encouragement to continue our journey,” says Shankar Narayanan, assistant director.
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Shanmuhananth and Dhivya were classmates at Anna University and have made many short films together. They feel submitting short films to various festivals subjects the films to professional criticism since they are judged by experts. “Since I am an architect and not from a film school I was very conscious about getting my films critiqued. So, I decided to make films for National and International festivals to gain experience which I hope will help me grow in this field,” adds Shanmuhananth.
“The message we want to convey to our viewers through our film is to understand that every individual is different and to respect that uniqueness in every person. Society needs to acknowledge them for the way they are, instead of criticising or neglecting them. On the other hand, people who feel inferior because they are different have to understand that they are privileged to be different,” the team explains.
Shanmuhananth, Dhivya and Ramya are planning to attend the film festival. They have started work on their next film which is the story of a 25-year-old orphan girl trying to find her mother. They also plan to screen a trailer about this at Cannes.
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The cast and crew include Vaishali Ravishankar, Jaytesh Sridhar, Antony Jacson, D. Ramya, Swetha, Akshaya, Archana, A. Kavitha, Ramalingam, Shanmuhananth S., Shankar Narayanan, Dhivya Ravishankar, Surya Narayanan, Harish Ravichandran, Padma and Praveen Leonard.