Bengali film makes it to Locarno fest
Kolkata, July. 26 (PTI): "Nirakar Chaya" (Formless Shadow), a short film made on a shoe-string budget by experimental filmmaker Ashish Avikunthak, has been selected for the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland.
This is the second Indian film after "Rabindranath", a documentary by the late Satyajit Ray, to be chosen for the premiere film festival.
Avikunthak, who is preparing for his PhD from Standford University in the US, said, "The film was made on a shoe- string budget. My wife and I saved our scholarship money but it was not enough. People and my friends helped me to make this film."
Moloy Banerjee, the writer of the film's script and also its assistant director, said many actors performed for free "so we could make the film".
The 82-minute film, to be shown at the "Filmmakers of the Present Competition" in Locarno, is based on an interpretation of the acclaimed novella "Pandavpuram" by well-known Malayalam author Sethumadhavan.
The film has an experimental narrative that is surrealist in approach and tells the tale of an abandoned housewife who falls in love with an imaginary lover.
The story is sandwiched between the forlorn wife's wild fantasies coming to life when the paramour she invokes transforms into reality.
Oscillating between doubt and acceptance, denial and counter-denial, her character swings between reality and imagination.
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