A bundle of talent
Wannabe directors team Revolutionary Directors Xperiments will show nine short films
By : cris
Update: 2014-08-24 00:02 GMT
Three men and a woman walk out of the Nishagandhi Auditorium. They chat, pulling each other’s legs as they wait for another friend to join. Sameer is a little late, he comes waving, a file of brochures in his hand. On it is written RDX, a name they’ve given their team Revolutionary Directors Xperiments. There are ten of them, all new, wannabe directors who have come together to make films of their own. At 8 am on Sunday, they will premiere their first project together — nine short films from ten of them, one character who is repeated in all of them — at Sree Theatre, Thiruvananthapuram.
The team is running around for their first screening as RDX, as the five who found a little time to be at Kanakakunnu Palace tell their story. “It all started when Prayag and Rakesh, who have worked on some short films together, sat with their friends and came up with the idea,” says Eby Daniels Ben, one of the ten directors. Eby has come down from Mumbai, where he works as an assistant director with Anurag Kashyap Films Private Ltd. “Along with those two, cinematographer Ajesh Venugopal and I too were discussing the idea. We roped in several of our friends. At first, there were 22 directors in all, but then in the end, because of the cost and other factors, it came down to 10.” The idea was to play these nine films one after the other, with a character repeated in all of them, and in a 10th film, show the story of this ‘mystery character’. “That, however, didn’t happen. So now he remains a mysterious character, nameless, appearing in some role or other in every film.”
Eby’s first short film Audition is part of the RDX project. It narrates a story where a stranger comes into the life of a woman to help her with an ‘audition’. Eby introduces the others standing with him — Ratheesh, with his first short film called Kooja, Chandini with Coin, Ajaz with Mutual Friend and Sameer with Black Heart. Among them, only Ratheesh is a student, studying at an engineering college in Thiruvananthapuram. The others are employed in different fields. Ajaz is an IT professional, whose film is also about a communist IT professional. “No it is not my life’s story,” he clears the air. “But there are some conversations I hear in daily life.” Sameer’s Black Heart is, however, inspired from a real life story. “It happened to a friend of mine, it is a love story, with three people in it,” says a shy Sameer, reluctant to divulge anymore.
Khais Millen is part of the team, and has worked as an assistant director to Blessy, with his film Lipstick that deals with homosexuality, and has won more than 12 international awards at film festivals. There is also Anush Mohan’s Momma that’s been taken in a single shot and Nikhil Sundaram’s An Admirer’s Gift about a strange mirror that lands up at a painter’s doorstep. The only English film in the list is from Prayag and Rakesh — App Msg, shot entirely on Samsung Galaxy S2 and iPhone 4. In all these films with their differences, the only common factor is the mystery man played by an actor called Sivakumar. He becomes a traveller in one, a guy at a coffee shop in another, a man who sings in a third. “Perhaps, we will make that tenth film with his story someday soon,” says Eby.