Friday Review
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Crisp narration
P.K. AJITH KUMAR
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‘Planning’ won the award for the best short feature film at ALA, a short-film festival in Kozhikode.
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Making his mark: A still from ‘Planning’ (left); Sudevan.
Two small-time thieves in a village make a meticulous plan to burgle a house when its residents are away. How an oversight costs the robbers dear is told in an engaging way sans melodrama or too many characters in ‘Planning,’ which walk
ed away with the award for the best short feature film at the ALA (Amateur Little Cinema) short-film festival in Kozhikode. In all, 150 films competed for about 20 awards.
The 27-minute film had also won Sudevan the award for the best director at the Swaralaya film festival at Palakkad. The 32-year-old, who makes a living by painting banners and portraits, scripted and shot the film himself, using a friend’s handycam. The film was produced with a sum of Rs.15,000, which was pooled in by his friends in his village, Peringode (Palakkad).
Second film
Sudevan, a self-taught filmmaker, has done a pretty good job in ‘Planning,’ his second film. He succeeds in holding the viewers’ attention right from the opening shot that shows the older thief making a sketch of the targetted house. The two thieves are played well by Achuthanandan and Ashok Kumar, the only characters in the film.
Encouraged by the success of ‘Planning,’ he wants to make more short films. “Though I have always had ambitions about making it big in cinema, I don’t see making short films as a path to enter mainstream cinema. Making short films is interesting and challenging. I was always attracted to cinema and that’s why I kept coming back to it after doing various jobs – at an engineering company, a jewelry store and a textile shop,” he says.
He reveals he was pleasantly surprised when he learnt that he had won the award for the best director at the Swaralaya festival. “I thought somebody was trying to pull my leg when I was told that I was chosen for the award. I was hesitant to send ‘Planning’ for any competition because I wasn’t sure of how it would be received.”
Sudevan’s first film, ‘Varoo,’ about a traveller being misled, was also appreciated at short-film festivals.
“It was after attending a workshop, conducted by ALA five years ago in Thrissur, for script-writing that I felt the urge to make films. Earlier, I had written a script for a feature film and was disappointed when things didn’t work out and had almost stopped dreaming about films when I attended that workshop,” he says.
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Friday Review
Bangalore
Chennai and Tamil Nadu
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
|
