A special program by Cecilia Cossio
In 2015, during the fifth edition of the Short, we dedicated the “Indian” special programme to the Film & Television Institute of India, the famous cinema school of Pune, and to some of its most established alumni. This year we therefore decided to dedicate the special to an ‘offspring’ of the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI), a school as prestigious as the former, based in Kolkata and founded in 1995 by the Indian government. Here, in 2000, Ashish Pandey, born in Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), raised in Nagpur (Maharashtra) and now residing in Bombay (Mumbai), obtained his diploma in sound. Even if more attracted by self-taught studies, at SRFTI he met a teacher who helped him find the right direction: Subrata Mitra, one of the greatest Indian cinematographers and professor emeritus at the school from 1997 till his death in 2001. The Apu trilogy and seven more films by Satyajit Ray’s owe a lot his innovative vision. It is to Subrata Mitra that Ashish Pandey dedicated his first short, The Cabin Man (2007).
To make marginal voices heard: this is the aspiration, the project that inspires the director’s and his collaborators’ work. With this aim in mind, in 2006 he created Sophia Films, an independent production company where the three shorts we present on this occasion – The Cabin Man, Khule darwaaze (Open Doors, 2010) and Nooreh (2018) – were conceived.
The old guardian of an abandoned railway cabin, an old lady who lives in a desolated widow house, an eight-year-old girl who lives in a Kashmir village, on the Indo-Pakistan border, caught in an endless crossfire: these are the protagonists of the three films. The first two shorts are reflections on loneliness, a particularly hard condition in the traditional Indian world, where the individual, due to his “dividual” nature, gains significance in relation with others, mainly with his family members. However, the fleeting glance on their lives also reflects the passing of time, time that leaves behind those who are unable to keep up with the pace of the world and of life. While in the first two shorts the accent is on the marginality of the individual, in Nooreh we find a collective marginality. “If there is a paradise on earth, it is here”: so the Mughal emperor Jahangir said about Kashmir. However, it has been a long time since this region is more similar to a hell on earth, devastated as it is by a never ending war between India and Pakistan, while a consolidated peaceful coexistence between communities has been compromised by the victims and by the oppressive presence of the Indian army in the region. Of course, children are the most affected: “What does it mean for a child to see the army in every nook and corner of the street? How does it feel growing up in the shadow of guns?” so Ashish Pandey asks himself in an interview. The answer – he says – may be read on Noor’s face, “stoic, but also uncertain and anxious, intermittently happy and hopeful”, the face of Kashmir.
THE CABIN MAN (2007, 8’)
Direction & story: Ashish Pandey
Camera: Ganeswara Mohapatra / Editing: Asit Kaushik / Music: Daniel B. George, Surendra Rajan / Production: Ashish Pandey
An old guardian of an abandoned railway cabin, a loneliness that has a moment of truce when a train passes by, without stopping.
KHULE DARWAAZE (Open Doors, 2010, 15’)
Direction & story: Ashish Pandey
Camera: Barun De Joardar / Editing: Shomick Boshoo / Music: Daniel B. George / Production: Ashish Pandey
An old woman lives in a house for widows, without any real human contact, in front of an open door that leads nowhere and no life comes in.
NOOREH (2018, 22’)
Direction & story: Ashish Pandey
Camera: Sushil Gautam / Editing: Pallavi Singhal / Music: Daniel B. George / Production: Ashish Pandey
“Nestled in the Kashmir valley there is a small village on the India-Pakistan border always caught in the crossfire between the two warring nations. One night Nooreh, an eight-year old girl, discovers that the gun battle rages when she sleeps while the bloody duel stops when she keeps her eyes open.” (A.P.)
