“We ‘see’, we ‘draw’; but they ‘capture’ ”
Shiwani Bhardwaj features the recently concluded White Wash Video film festival, initiated by the students of Fine Arts Faculty, Baroda. She gives glimpse on the video works presented in the festival.
Making videos is not a part of academic training at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Vadodara. Yet the students here, could not resist themselves from expressing their ideas through this intensifying device. Recently, a fest was organized at the Faculty on 2nd and 3rd of February 07. Artconcerns.com, Faculty of Fine arts, Vadodara and Idea, sponsored the event. It was proposed in order to provide a platform for the students to screen their attempts in short films. And adding to this pioneering endeavor was rhythm of strings in a concert by the students themselves.
The students trained here are not unfamiliar with increasing appreciation of Video Installations, video Art, Digital Art and so on as an alternate medium of communication. But however, that is restricted to the gallery spaces and often devoid of qualities that adhere to the conventional motion pictures. And, cinema is something we need not be told about. Intentionally or unintentionally actors, dialogues, drama, narration have become part and parcel of our lives. And with the easy availability of gadgets, what one needs to have is just a thought! Here quite a strong line divides the two genres of cinema and video art. The former is treated more as a part of performing arts than fine arts and is often restricted in its approach. But what lay common between the two is the power of imagination and boredom from indifference.
This muddy transitional area was explored and efforts were made to move beyond boundaries and redefine space. In this respect, the films shown during the course of two days lay as a bridge between the two languages. The work may neither be of a very definite character or nor match the premium products of either two. Nevertheless, the show records responses from the under training artist to this new media, which they seldom employed earlier. It was interesting to note that the way students used this medium was astonishingly wide and experimental.
From delicate experience of images and powerful imagination as seen in the “butterfly” by an Applied art student Anushree to a more complex movie by Gautam Gosh that was named “ways of seeing” and questions the same. There were movies that dealt with identity, historical and political movements with a very humane tone to it. A short film conceptualized & directed by Abhiram Poduval was titled as “che-watch”, the movie questioned the very existence of icons and the re-contextualisation of historical figures in popular imagery. Technically manipulating a historical figure using conventional frames put the sarcasm forth. Another, greatly applauded film was “irfan ka radio” by Jitto George, which illustrate the holocaust earthquake through the eyes of teenage boy and the erosion of his desires in the same.
The event was greatly supported by the Faculty, wherein B.V. Suresh, M. Sashidharan and Shailendra Khushwaha too contributed to the upsurge. Their movies as they said were part of their experiments with the same. B.V. Suresh’s screened his animated series, one of which was titled “introspection” with deep, diffusing colours and distinct forms in a narrative format. He said that the medium is very challenging but at the same time offers new avenues of scope. M. Sashidharan short film, “ Gandhi must walk” used a single image of Gandhi’s feet to elucidate the present socio-political scenario. Shailendra Khushwaha shared his shoot of very relaxed frames of explicit Rajasthan and the life of its tourist industry. The event was also thrown open for ex-students, and students like Siddharth and surbhi also participated.
Shailendra Khushwaha added a note that making movie is not an individual task; it requires teamwork and involves mathematics. Thus enlisting the people who contributed to the event is difficult. But for the second part it can be comfortably said that some films had fair understanding of dynamics and canons of conventional frames. Yet the main lore was of varying vocabularies, and this is what made the event eventful. Students like Abhiram Poduval, Sabhi Ahmad, Gautam Gosh, Deepankar Gohain and their allies set the tradition henceforth. It did not define the procedure of making movies but set the camera rolling……………where…
...” We ‘see’, we ‘draw’ and we ‘capture’ “ |
