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REEL MAGICAL REALISM

MASTER OF ALLEGORY Vipin Vijay `s experimental films lead him on the quest for `cinematic truth.' PHOTOS: S. GOPAKUMAR.

Experimental filmmaker Vipin Vijay chooses to tread a path different from most others of his ilk. It is a path that takes this award-winning, affable 32-year-old native of Kozhikode who had a “pathological instinct” to enter the field on a self-proclaimed journey of self-discovery; where mind-bogglingly experimental rather than commercial cinema guides him on his quest for that all elusive goal of “cinematic truth.”

Quite simply put his short films, documentaries and recently completed maiden feature tentatively named ‘The Legend of the Net Potato,’ are all intellectually complex, phantasmagorical allegories, which make you think rather than feel. All of them link stark reality with the mystical world and that too on so many complex levels that it often leaves even true aficionados of cinema grappling for answers.

“As a filmmaker, I am not a traditionalist. My films are not meant to cater to the masses,” says Vipin, a tad matter-of-factly. “I never want to belong to cinema. Rather cinema should belong to me. It may sound a bit egoistical but I make films for myself and not for profit. There are a range of avenues to recoup my money only that it takes time. From a market perspective, I can make purely international cinema living in Kerala. It’s not that I underestimate the force of the public, but a film for the masses is simply not my ball game,” adds the director who has the distinction of being the first Indian to win the prestigious Tiger award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2007 for his Malayalam documentary, ‘Video Game.’

STILLS FROM HIS LATEST VENTURE `THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY NET POTATO.'

The documentary, which is a look into the parallel development of cinema and the motor car, a fact that Vipin “happened to discover quite accidentally,” also won the John Abraham National Award for the best documentary (Environmental), the same year. His other short films ‘Kshurasya Dhara’ (The Razor’s Edge), ‘Hawa Mahal,’ and ‘Egotic World’ too have been shown at major film festivals all over world such as Rotterdam, Karlovyvary, Oberhausen, Montreal, Chicago, Milan, Mexico, Seattle and the Indian panorama, to name a few.

However, among film festival buffs in Kerala, Vipin became well known for his signature film that he created for the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) 2007. Vipin created ‘Broken Glass,’ a perplexingly allegoric film filled with disjointed and disturbing images and sounds on what was later revealed as the evolution and present deterioration of mass media in general and filmmaking in particular. Needless to say, at the time, it created a hue and cry, with delegates taking sides on the appropriateness of the imagery, accusing it of being ahead of its time and not in tune with so-called ‘Malayali sensibilities.’ “In the signature film, I depicted the deterioration of filmmaking in the digital age. These days with every Tom, Dick and Harry who wields a camera calling himself a filmmaker, the sanctity and magic of filmmaking has been lost. Moreover, Indian traditional arts have always been passed down from one generation to the next through a process of osmosis. It was so even in late 1990’s, when I was at film school. These days everything from tutorials on filmmaking to instant themes for a film is available on the net. Piracy is detrimental to this tradition. Is all this not relevant?” asks Vipin, a graduate of the first batch of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata and winner of the prestigious Charles Wallace fellowship that lead to a stint at the British Film Institute (BFI), London.

Literature graduate Vipin claims to have been a “confused greenhorn” when he joined SRTFI, “simply because I had not been exposed to good cinema.” But what he discovered there put him on the road to experimentalism. “While there, I realised that a lot of things that I dreamt in that space also gave me a sense of looking at things in an archetypal way. I was exposed to different kinds of films that made me a true international citizen,” recalls Vipin who swears by the mastery of French auteur Robert Bresson. “He is not a visual allegorist like say Tarkovsky. But I find today when I am working, that the only filmmaker that connects with me is Bresson, purely for his sensibility of cinema,” says Vipin who is also an admirer of Indian filmmaker Kamal Swaroop who directed the controversial cult classic ‘Om Dar-b-Dar.’ It was armed with these esoteric sensibilities, that Vipin ventured into his maiden feature film in Malayalam, ‘The Legend of the Holy Net Potato.’ And yes, it is as convoluted as the title sounds. As of yesterday, he has begun a documentary commissioned by the Public Service Broadcast Trust in which five filmmakers across India will direct documentaries on themes of their choice. Vipin has chosen ‘catastrophe’ as his theme dissecting the subject “at a personal level, as a geography of survival, as terror and as a spectacle, to name a few.”

Vipin’s experiments with reel truths continue…

Reinterpreting legend

Vipin Vijay’s maiden feature film in Malayalam, ‘The Legend of the Holy Net Potato,’ that has been funded partly by the Hubert Bals fellowship of Rotterdam, the Gottenburg, Sweden film festival and the Global Film Initiative – a United States-based fund for promoting young talent in developing countries, is based on a short story by Malayali writer, N. Nandakumar. A ‘third vortex,’ a cyborg/female named Ramani, tells the tale of Hari, a genius computer “cracker” who is languishing in a dead-end job. Hari is on a quest to find an immortality chip for his grandfather, Kunjikuttan Nair, a black magician.

“It’s a very conceptual film which mixes occult and virtual reality in what I call as the fourth dimension of being ‘wiral,”’ says Vipin. The film was shot in Kerala, Kolkata, Mysore, and Hampi.

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