One is a lass who loves being behind the camera and the other is someone who loves being behind the mic and on camera. Meet filmmaker Manasa Sharma and singer cum actress Sparsha RK, two passionate hudugis from the ooru, the faces behind Coffee Bite, a production house that encourages women to be behind the camera — a task that’s often taken up by men. The media house is organising its first ever event —a concert, dedicated to the legendary singer S Janaki that will take place on April 26 at ADA Rangamadira.
Throwing light on their venture and more, Manasa says, “We have produced six short films and done music videos — some of our short films have been selected to be aired at film festivals. Till now, we’ve had only women crew work for us. In order to motivate ourselves and other ladies, we wanted to give a tribute to women achievers — we noticed that usually most credit goes to male performers and women don’t get the credit they deserve. So, we decided to have an event each year celebrating women and picked S Janaki — we’re simultaneously going to celebrate her birthday which is on April 23.”
The musical tribute will showcase her songs through 60 years and will have singers Sparsha, Anvitha Sridhar and Vikas Vashishta to do the crooning. Manasa reveals that they did have a crowdfunding campaign which has now ended, but they’re still looking for sponsors for the event. “We have donations coming in and we will somehow pull off the event whether we receive funds or not. We can’t keep waiting for other people to give us a chance, sometimes we need to do something ourselves,” says the fervent filmmaker.
Having started her production house in 2017, Manasa and her team have made six short films and two music videos. “Some of our short films have been selected to be screened at film festivals. Apart from that, we give technical assistance to other short films,” says Manasa, who’s a cinematographer, photographer and also a short filmmaker.
As for women behind the camera, she opines, “A lot of women are talented, but the general Indian mentality is that women can’t work behind the camera. If you have the passion, you need to shed that inhibition and just take the leap of faith as talent has no gender. I know ladies who do good work but to take up camera work as a mainstream job is something they are hesitant about.”
In the future, Manasa wants to do films — both short and feature. “I want to put my imagination on the bigger screen. Cinema is not just cinema now, it’s an educational medium too. I don’t want to do a mass film filled with fights — there’s a lot of teaching that can be done through cinema as a lot of people get influenced by it. I want to take this production house to a level where it produces quality content.” The show will start at 6 pm.
