IN MICRO, A SHORT FILM ABOUT INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING IN INDIA Goan-origin Shai Heredia, of Goan origin, and Shumona Goel's 'I Am Micro', a 15-minute black-and-white film is shot in the passages of an abandoned optics factory and centered on the activities of a low-budget film crew. To be screened at IFFI 2012, this experimental essay is about filmmaking, the medium of film, and the spirit of making independent cinema.
Goel and Heredia said their film had been shot in the passages of an abandoned optics factory and centered on the activities of a low-budget film crew. This was aimed to be an experimental essay about filmmaking, the medium of film, and the spirit of making independent cinema. This film documents the now defunct factory of the National Instruments (NIL) Ltd. in Jadavpur, Kolkata. The factory produced the National 35, the only 35 mm still camera ever manufactured in India. Though the glory days of the National 35 camera were shortlived, the factory played an important role in the history of photography in India, the film's co-directors said. Heredia told this correspondent: "With I Am Micro, we wanted to make a film about the individual artist trying to make films in the world and often failing. It is ironic that by the time we ended the film in 2012, the labs we were working in had shut down. More recently, ARRI, Panavision, and Aaton have stopped making film cameras. And yet we believe that there will always be filmmakers who will find a way, because for them, cinema is absolutely necessary, or important: it is essential cinema." Their film has already won the best short documentary award at the 5th International Short & Documentary film festival in Kerala, and at the 2012 Gran Prix 25fps festival for experimental cinema, Croatia. It has also been screened at festivals in London, Copenhagen, Toronto, Croatia, San Francisco, Rotterdam, Canada and Estonia. Shai Heredia, who traces her roots to Goa, is a filmmaker and curator of film art. In 2003 she founded Experimenta -- the international festival for experimental cinema in India. She developed this event into a significant international forum for artists' film and video. Experimenta Film Society hosts an international artists in residence programme and promotes the production, exhibition and distribution of artists' film and video. Bangalore-based Shai has curated experimental film programs at major film and art venues like the Berlinale Film festival Germany and the Tate Modern UK amongst others. She holds an MA in documentary film from Goldsmiths College, London. Mumbai-based co-director Shumona Goel is an experimental filmmaker. She studied filmmaking at Bard College (USA), sociology at New Delhi's JNU, and anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (UK). Goel works with 16mm film, slide projections, and VHS to produce low budget, personal films and film installations. Her work has been exhibited in many film festivals and museums like the Tate Modern, Forum Expanded (Berlin International Film Festival), and the Guggenheim Museum (Berlin/NYC). Her film 'Atreyee' was composed of still photographs and documented the daily life of a small‐town girl struggling to find her own way in big city Bombay. Her next film, 'Don't Look at Me That Way!' was made with found footage and explored the psychological impact of advertising on contemporary Indian society. In 2009, she co ‐founded SUSPECT, an interdisciplinary collective of poets, filmmakers, anthropologists and activists dedicated to working with found objects. She is currently developing a VHS project called "The Way of Light," which is an experimental documentary about modernity in rural India. 'I Am Micro' has Avijit Mukul Kishore as cinematographer; Shai Heredia, Mario Pfeifer and Shumona Goel as editors; Shumona Goel, Vivek Sachidanandan and Kevin Pyne as sound designers and mixers; Pualine Oliveros responsible for music; and its other collaborators being Kamal Swaroop, Ashim Ahluwalia, Futureeast Film, Yashas Shetty, Nikhil Arolkar, Sandhini Poddar, and The Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation. Mubi.com -- the online destination to watch, discover, and discuss independent, international, and classic cinema -- commented on this short film: "An outstanding work of dialectical history, I Am Micro combines sounds and images from distinct but related situations to create a complex portrait of trans-Indian film production on the margins (or, if you prefer, in the shadows, since Bollywood casts quite a large one...." 'I Am Micro' has been described as a story that wends it way through "a variety of ruins, the forgotten fragments of low-budget independent filmmaking in India: a film lab in Kolkata, fallen into disrepair; leftover shards of a movie set; and eventually, scenes from an actual production." In the film, a marginal figure in the Hindi film world, Kamal Swaroop, explains why he makes small, oppositional films, and stopped being a director when that was no longer and option. Kamal Swaroop was also Assistant Director on Attenborough's Gandhi. 'I Am Micro' will screen at IFFI Goa on November 24, 2012 at 8 PM INOX-II, Old GMC Building, Campal, Panjim. Heredia said: "The film has been extremely well received by film festivals all over the world.... However, we are concerned that our film will be blitzed out by the bollywood/mega feature film razmatazz that IFFI celebrates..." Contact details: Shumona Goel: [email protected] Shai Heredia: [email protected]
