The Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival dedicates this special program to one of the greatest directors in Maratthi language: Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni. The program is curated by Cecilia Cossio and our homage is articulated in four short movies, Kulkarni’s favourite expressive form, in which the director’s main characteristics are easily recognizable: a documentary-like precision in depicting both physical and psychological settings; a sharp sensitivity in delineating characters and situations through music, silences and sounds; the theme of death and sense of loss, and the attempts to make sense of them.
Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni was born in 1976 in Pune, in Maharashtra. His interest in cinema arises during his college years, when he starts collaborating with director Sumitra Bhave and enrols to the most prestigious Indian School of Cinema, the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) of Pune. Many of his short movies of this time are met with great success, starting from Girni (2005), his graduation work presented in 2015 also on the screen of the Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival in occasion of the commemoration of FTII. Since 2008, Kulkarni has created another four feature films, the last of which is Highway (2015). Nonetheless, Kulkarni has never forgotten his first love, so much so that in 2013 he gave start to the Shoot a short! Workshops, open to everyone interested in the making of short movies.
SCREENING PROGRAM:
DARSHAN – DIVINE SIGHT (India, 2003, 10’)
On the day of a wedding ceremony, a child is anxiously waiting for a goddess to appear during that night’s ritual. Except, when she finally appears, the child is fast asleep.
THREE OF US (India, 2008, 14’)
Documentary about a family of three: father, mother and disabled child, who needs constant assistance. Their behaviour shows a quiet acceptance of fate, under the shadow of veiled sadness.
GAARUD – THE SPELL (India, 2008, 11’)
This short movie runs in only one frame inside an apartment block close to a train station. The camera never stops and passes from one room to the other, through different daily lives and stories intertwined, all sharing the same difficult existential condition.
VILAY – THE ENDING (India, 2009, 13′)
The young protagonist of this short movie assists to his grandmother’s death and to the end of the world she had lived. On the one hand, this work takes us back to the past through the boy’s memories, while on the other, it shows us a constantly changing present with no room for old times.
Special thanks to: Film & Television Institute of India.
