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अहमदाबाद Diaries

At NID, a course called 'Open Elective' is conducted every year. NID is a multidisciplinary design school and students from various disciplines come together for this course.
Different workshops are conducted for this course, sometimes by visiting faculties and sometimes by internal faculties or senior students. Everyone chooses an open elective of their own interest.
During my academic year I chose an elective called 'Ahmedabad Diaries'. In total 12 students became a part of this elective. We were put into the groups of 2-4 people in a team.We were supposed to go all around the Ahmedabad City and capture the real essence of local culture, traditions, life, people and heritage like an explorer. Throughout the course we were supposed to maintain a diary and keep record of all the places we visit or people we meet or even the thoughts that we generate. So here are few pages from my Ahmedabad diary:

My Idea:

Front page

A Jewish Marathi Receipe

This is a video clip from my documentary film 'Ojharati Valu' (The Vanishing Sand). This recipe is called 'Udith Methi' and is cooked by Milka Ashtamkar, a local woman from Alibag, Maharashtra (India). Milka belongs to the few people from jewish community who have decided to stay back in Alibag, India. While most of the jews from Alibag have already migrated to Israel due to financial problems. She now prepares different Jewish-Marathi Recipes for the tourists (mostly jewish migrants staying in Israel) who come to visit Alibag.

Watch the video here:

'Ojhrati Valu' (The Vanishing Sand)

(Ojharati Valu) The Vanishing Sand

Diploma Project: A Documentary Film

Guide: Shilpa Das Sponsor: Ford Foundation

Synopsis:

The film focuses on the current issues of commercialization of Alibag, a small town near Mumbai. Through this film I have tried to create awareness about the cultural and environmental aspects of the place that are being overlooked for tourism prospects. I have tried to tell stories of Alibag by voicing the people who belong to this place and thus help in growing sensibility towards the local culture of Alibag. This film is the journey of the once infamous expression “Alibag se aya hain kya?” (Are you from Alibag or what?) To now a favorite holiday destination and the expression “wow, you are from Alibag!” The change is inevitable for any place but will this fame of Alibag help in the betterment of its future?

'Reflections' a musical documentary

The film has series of visuals which takes one through the world surrounded by mirrors and then silently demonstrates the vulnerable and fragile nature of human existence.

We are under siege…

For a long time, the beauty, the reality, the truth and the illusion of human life always existed on the periphery of my thoughts but never dared to challenge my contentment. However, I do not wish to dwell upon the mirage, instead I wish to pay tribute to the indomitable spirit of countless individuals who have conquered the illusory world of mirrors.

This film is nominated for '3rd Jaiput international film festival' in documentary category and the festival dates are 27th to 30th January 2011.

link to the festival website is: http://www.jiffindia.org/

It was also selected for the online film festival by Culture unplugged.com for the theme 'spirits enlightened'

http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/2905

watch this film:

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Polo Ad spot and Godess PSA

“Jab hath me usske Polo aai...”

Concept (Polo) :

I have kept in mind the unique shape of the polo mint while plotting the concept behind this ad spot. In doing so, I have placed the plot in a Hindu mythological setting and centered it around the story of Ram’s victory over Ravan in a comical way.

“Main ek aurat hoon...”

Public Service Film Against Superstition :

‘POSSESSION BY GODDESS’

Concept (Goddess):

My main aim was to address the notions behind Goddess worship, which is still prevalent in many rural regions of the country. My message in this film is that women need to be treated with respect and to avoid being seeped into the world of superstitious beliefs.

Festival Entry:

Selected for screening in first “Cut.in student’s film festival”, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai 2009.

and t

he film society of Kirorimal College's

"UPPER STALL 2009"

The Annual Students film festival held on

24th and 25th of February 2009.

"Ekaaksha" my first short fiction film

This film deals with the true incidence of stealing the food kept on a grave. A grave keeper starts his day with a ritual such as digging a pit and burying a dead child. The money bestowed by the relatives at the grave is his only source of income. Thus he takes pride in his golden teeth which he gleefully observes in the reflection of his mirror after returning from his duty. Meanwhile three children fly kites near the graveyard. The mother of one of these children summons him for lunch; the other two children have to find their own food. So the elder takes the younger one to the graves and he tries to steal the food. He gets caught by the grave keeper while stealing. The grave keeper doesn’t allow him to eat that food as he believes in the myth that when someone dies his soul comes back in the form of a crow and if it eats the food kept for him that means the person has attained moksha. Thus he shoos them away. Then the grave keeper contemplates at the food which lies in waste. Thus the film is trying to question the beliefs about the death rituals conducted in India.

http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/1909/Ekaaksha--one-eyed--crow

watch this film:

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Schooldays

It was a short film that was born when I had started doing my research work for my documentary film 'Reflections'. I had visited this particular school for the differently able children in Ahmedabad. We are so used to the world of sound and visuals that we can never imagine living without them.

When I had first entered the premises of this school, I felt helpless communicating with the children. But sooner they helped me out with their unique language. Thus I realized that the emotions are universal and requires no language.

The film was shot and edited in just two days.

This Film can be viewed here:

Paprika

My first individual attempt of a short film using special effects and blue screen for the SEG course at nid. Shivbilas Saxena, Sr. Nid faculty and Akhila Krishan, Nid alumni had conducted the course.

The story of a poem

I had read a story by a female malyali writer called ‘story of a poem’ in the book ‘Katha: stories by Indian women’ and I loved it. The story had a poem written in parts. I had collected them and made a small cell-phone film out of it.

watch this video:

jhini jhini ...

One of the assignments during the documentary workshop course.

The topic was ‘my work is to wrest order from chaos’. I chose nid’s weaving studio.

It was the place with lots of activities. I selected Kabir’s doha ‘jhini jhini chadariya’ where he gives a metaphor of textile to a human’s life. Chandita Mukherjee, well known Documentary filmmaker and founder of Comet Media Foundation, Mumbai, had conducted the course.

Watch this video:

Sawalichi Vyatha (Sad tale of a shadow):

We always look forward to the ray of ‘light’; we call it the ray of ‘hope’.

The darkness and the night is a shadow but then shadows are the ones who are not to be desired.

I have always been fascinated by the form of a shadow. When I look at them I always hear something, thus the poem was born.

Concept:

The film was shot with the basic idea of capturing just shadows excluding human or other living forms and then creating a visual story out of their movements and shapes. Then after editing them I realized that the story lied inside the life of a shadow and not in the one who casts them. So being closer to the language of words, a poem came out of me as a result of shadow’s life story. Thus this visual and metaphorical story of shadow relates to the life of a woman or a lonesome person or an old person or just anyone who sees the film.

Synopsis:

The film is a visual poem with the imagery of shadows talking about life of any lonesome individual who has always been dependent on someone else and never had his own existence but now he is searching for his own identity. but at the end of shadow’s contemplation it finds out that there is no point in giving any meaning to its dead life as it has always been dead. And has no end as well.

Watch this film here:

^{‘Sad tale of a shadow’}

dedicated to one’s own shadow…

^{All my life I have been dwelling on the threshold of the lives of others…}

^{But today I seek to explore my own identity…}

^{A symbol of living…a daughter of light…}

^{I seek to find my own light…lost somewhere in the dark meandering roads…}

^{The pain of loneliness is slowly piercing through me…suffocating in the cage of time…}

^{Alas! The cage is nothing but my own visage…who will quench this deceased soul?}

^{Living,…I am, but time has frozen me into a lifeless body}

^{Having inculcated with others for so long, I have disregarded my selfhood}

^{A place far away from the harrowing crowds, where tranquility prevails…I celebrate with the lonesome}

^{A world that tramples upon mutilated bodies and broken souls…}

^{This tilt in the balance of my life has brought a feeling of hollowness so strong…}

^{I have put my visage for sale…I am now shapeless…sacrificing my shape for others}

^{But still I look towards the horizon in spite of my wounds}

^{A countless times I have been questioned, “Why do you still linger? Leave us for good”}

^{To which I have no answer, “Is it a choice?”}

^{Where shall I go? The darkness in my life is an endless abyss and shall always plague me forever…}

^{Even suicidal thoughts offer no balm to the wounded heart…the sheer curse of immortality that binds me…}

^{To whom shall I assert my feelings? Who will listen to this sad tale of a sorrowful shadow?}

^{To wail in anger is a privilege I do not enjoy,}

^{for I have no voice…}

^{…I have no voice…}