Short Film Festival:From a young angle


Reality, at times, is not what we see but what we experience. The seven-minute short-film ‘One Rupee Tip’ by Rojin Thomas, who is pursuing his diploma in filmmaking at Cochin Media School, portrays the real face of friendship through two circumstances. Whereas ‘Thaniye’, a 11-minute short film by Renjith R Nair, a student of Digital Film making and Recording Arts at AAT Media College, Chennai, juxtaposes the preferences of children with those of adults through the daily life of a father and daughter. Campus films screened at the fifth International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala dealt either with the realities of life or the rigmaroles of human mind.



The message of ‘One Rupee Tip’ was that ‘friends are born not made’. People whom we mistake as friends may be those who expect to take advantage of us whereas we might find people whom we never considered as friends coming to our help in difficult times.


‘Thaniye’ is about a little girl who literally cannot get a glance of her dad as he leaves for job in the morning before she wakes up and returns only after she falls asleep. One day, quite by chance, the father comes to understand how his daughter yearns for love and care. The film draws a distinction between the thought process of adults and kids.


‘Sudden Death’, a four-minute film by Rycard Appu George, a student of English at Yeldo Mar Baselios College, Kothamangalam, revolves around the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ in human mind. One of the actors does not one wish to come to terms with the death of his friend. Though he has watched sudden death in a film, he is not ready to accept the same has happened to his friend.


Even if the whole world vouches for it, a mother may not be ready to believe that her child is guilty. ‘Umma’, is a film by Mahesh Gopal, who studied film direction at Chetana Media, Thrissur. In the 13-minute short film, we see an aged mother who is haunted by the thoughts about her son’s involvement with terrorists. When rumours do the rounds in the countryside about the resemblance of her son with the sketch of a culprit in a terrorist attack in Mumbai, the mother refuses to believe it. But her faith is shattered when she finds bloodstains on his shirt.


In the 12-minute short film ‘Violet’ by Vincent Jose, a house surgeon from Palakkad, the camera is panned on the mental aberrations of a person afflicted with thanatophobia. He sees death everywhere and in his dreams he sees a figure with the face of a clown wearing a long black gown.


The nine-minute long film, ‘Present Tense - Perversions Today Tomorrow’ by Sreeram Ramesh, who studies Mass Communication at Mar Ivanios College, has attempted to convey the unexpected interruptions that may occur in the flow of life through the pertinent theme of female abuse.

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