Saturday, 13 July 2013

SHORTS: Bigger and better than the most of usual Friday releases! [4/5]

It wasn't ages back so, I assume you remember the awe-inspiring times of Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Govind Nihlani, Saeed Akhtar Mirza and lots more, when Indian cinema discovered the term of new-wave parellel cinema aka meaningful cinema [Alas, we could access that on Doordarshan primarily either on Sunday afternoons or in late night slots] to reinvent- rekindle their conscientiousness to play a pivotal role in showing not the dreamy-saucy world of lies but the gloomy- depressingly dark world of dead reality. In today’s times, the same kind of liability and movement is being lead by Mr. Anurag Kashyap and his extremely passionate team of new-age indie filmmakers!

SHORTS is, in principle, a nicely conceived & designed bouquet of 5 award-winning short films by 5 potential filmmakers of tomorrow. Now, you can find many more short indie films swarming on social networking sites and on video sharing sites like YouTube but these 5 are the best of the bests…and comparatively bigger & better than the most of usual Friday releases.

Directed by Shlok Sharma, SUJATA is a hard-hitting tale of an intrafamilial sexual abuse victim who has been in such painful state for years and is now left with no other option but to rebel & react. Huma Qureshi thrives in hitting every chord just right in every moment she’s in.  

THE EPILOGUE by Siddharth Gupt creates a modern-age thriller, innovatively conceptualized with striking amalgamation of interesting visuals & sound cuts. You won’t find any dialogues here but a suggestively haunting giggles and chuckles of Richa Chaddha, playing a wild, aggressive, unstable, unreal lover to a man confined & restrained to his own. This film leaves a lot unanswered to challenge you to interpret. Impressive!    

Anirban Roy’s AUDACITY is about a free-spirited girl trapped into her own house with a father who spends his nights playing card-games with friends from neighborhood and a mother who’s always into cooking and ‘poojas’. This portrayal of typical Bengali middle-class family routine is pleasantly ended with reasonable suggestion of a way out.   

MEHFUZ by Rohit Pandey starts with Gulzar saab’s ‘Maut tu ek kavita hai, mujhse ek kavita ka waada hai milegi mujhko’, lines getting lived by a dead faced man, missing an alive warmth of companionship while sincerely taking care of unidentified-unattended dead bodies. The pain of longing and the unmoved, hard-to-shake almost dead emotions are beautifully enacted by Nawazuddin. Romancing with the dead!

& lastly, Neeraj Ghaywan’s excruciatingly real SHOR that shows the troubled times in life of a North Indian dysfunctional family of working wife, unemployed husband and an unreasonable mother, in the city of dreams Mumbai. Vineet singh outshines along with Ratnabali Bhattacharjee to evoke an emotional outburst that starts on a very sore, stinging and discomforting level but ends up with lumps in your throat, tears in eyes & a smile with a hope that everything will be settled after.

Beautifully shot, brilliantly executed concepts, perfectly created tone to suit each story differently and accordingly! This presentation is an actor’s delight, filmmaker’s pride and viewer’s choice. If you see cinema as an art, this is for you. If you see cinema as a medium of expression, this is for you. If you see cinema as a serious business or a career option, this is definitely for you. I just wish I could see a time when every Friday I have something like this. Overwhelming Experience! ****[4/5]

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