One day long back in history there was a guy called Pritam, who was famous for his photographs of Page 3 and the topper of the who's who list of Bangalore theatre scene, and who used to smile at me when I used to visit Koshies and I first thought he works there since there was no time in those days that he was not present when I visited there. We did speak about theatre some times and he finally called me one day. We did a play called Khel for which I got critical acclamation from people from the who's who ciricle. Recently he woke up suddenly and over few glasses of rum told me that he has started making movies. We took this up as a project for his videos and shot in basemen of Alliance Française. We used lights of my car and Pritams newly adopted baby a sofisticated camera imported from some posh country. There were three things which got hurt during making of this movie Amjad, Camera & my Car.
It recently got selected for a film festival online and I want all of you to read Pritam's mail down below and VOTE for it.
PRITAMS MAIL TO ALL:
Hi all,
Our short video titled 'the encounter in a basement' has been selected for screening at the babelgum online film festival 2
P D Sathish Chandra, Amjad Prawej and I got together to try and develop a piece for video based on an earlier production of ours called 'khel'. We talked a bit, shifted context, Sathish sat down with someone from crime branch and then we started improvising with existing ideas. Unscripted and still quite sketchy, we decided to just go and shoot whatever we had, even though we didn't have a clue beyond a couple of scenes. On looking at the footage, I didn't think anything would emerge but, nevertheless, sat down to an edit. Many many many hours/days/weeks later I did manage to put something together, and a few avatars later, 'the encounter in a basement emerged'. It was still a little sketchy and, in retrospect, needed proper scripting, time etc but it was nice to see a beginning, middle and end.
babelgum is an online portal for video - fiction, documentary, animation etc - and this is the second fest they're doing. Being online, they don't have the limitations that traditional fests have in terms of time and space, and hence are able to screen a really large number of films. Which of course worked very well in our favor. Screening started on the 2nd of Feb and goes on to the 2nd of April. The fest is competitive and is decided by public vote though I have no idea how people are going to watch over 600 (yes, 600 short films spread across 4 categories selected from over 1700 entries!) and come to any conclusion. I'm sure there will be mayhem but I'm equally sure it'll be a lot of fun. I'm actually looking forward to watching all the stuff that people have sent in. After screening and voting, there's a shortlisting done based on public vote and winners are determined by a jury headed by Spike Lee from this shortlist.
If you'd like to watch the video and vote, or vote anyway, hehe, click on the link below
The relevant page will open and you'll have to click on the video 'play' icon. However, you will have to download the babelgum player (you'll be prompted at the right time) to view the video and get to the voting widget. It's a pretty quick download though. The player is quite cool but plays only babelgum content.
So, that's that. We don't have any illusions about what our chances might be as far as the competition is concerned, but this has kicked us enough to start the next short film. And I guess, in the final analysis, that's the only thing that really matters.
Take care
preetam
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