Image taken from: youtube.com
Copyrights: Rijula Shah
Film directed by Rajula Shah

Venue: India Habitat Centre
Date: Thursday, July 9th, 2015

In today’s day and age of YouTube, watching documentaries in the comfort of ones homes is what people are inclined to do. However the big screen has its own charm and we are most thankful that we made the effort of visiting Gulmohar Hall, Habitat on a week evening for watching this documentary that was screened by FD Zone, Delhi.

The film is about a potter Loknath in the village Sonpur, Orissa. He makes clay toys for children. He also narrates mythological tales. The filmmaker Rajula Shah has depicted on celluloid this apparently mundane affair with extreme finesse. Each and every shot is a visual delight. Jha is a skilled storyteller and has used mixed media (stills, videos, background score etc.) to compose the film. By way of sound she has used narratives, live recordings and instrumental music. But the spoken languages of the film are inconsequential and we could almost hear the unsaid lines in a language of their own. As a leitmotif, she has used shots of her son panning first five years of his life. As the film evolves, it becomes increasingly clear that Loknath is not a potter. Nor a story-teller. He is an Artist.

The way Shah has fused abstract / real-life / fantasy and compressed five years footage in a time span of about 40 minutes is almost magical. Plus it fills us with nostalgia.

We are told Shah is an alumnus of FTII Pune. That shows.