The screen comes to life with Vyloppilli’s lines.
With eyebrows scorn-studded, issues he decrees
The lowly get scattered like leaves dry in the wind
‘Who’s there to tell the stories of the dry leaves?,’ asks the narrator. You find out slowly, as images start to appear while two narrators take us further into the story.
This is how ‘Krishnashtami: The Book of Dry Leaves’ interprets Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon’s 1958 poem Krishnashtami. It explores the lives of people who live on the margins and the issues of censorship and imagination. The tag line of the title ‘book of dry leaves’ works as a metaphor for fragile, scattered human stories, much like leaves blown around in a storm. The film itself, though, is unlike any other in Malayalam Cinema — it has been shot in an experimental still-image format.
As the film prepares for its first international premiere at the Moscow International Film Festival, to be held from April 16 to 23, director Abhilash Babu discusses his process and inspiration. “I like to experiment with different forms of filmmaking. This time, it is a movie told through stills. We didn’t shoot the whole film as photos. We shot video clips and then froze the frames during editing,” he says. The use of still images was not an aesthetic choice; it is justified in the film.
The film imagines a dystopian world where a totalitarian regime censors cinema, cutting and controlling what can be seen. “The film, set inside such a world, tells the story of an attempt to rescue what ‘remains’ of cinema,” he informs.
The film follows the protagonist, Sreedharan, who is an artist— played by actor and director Jeo Baby. Sreedharan is imprisoned along with 10 others. Carrying a sketchbook, he begins to engage with fellow inmates, listening to their stories and sketching them as a way to cope with the boredom and fatigue of being detained. “The sketch book he carries is also a metaphor for the ‘Book of Dry Leaves’. But it can be anything, the dry leaves can also be the prisoners — each dry leaf representing a prisoner and their stories,” Abhilash says.
The film, which is 76 minutes long, was shot in just eight days. “We shot in and around Thiruvananthapuram. The locations included Poovar, where the main prison was, along with Chirayinkeezhu and Kollengode. We looked for bustling spaces that looked real and dystopian,” he adds.
Because the film features only still images, there is no dialogue delivery between characters, but there is a narration. “It is like a dialogue between the author and the spectator, and it follows a poetic format, with verses from Vyloppilli’s poem. We also used some lines written by me,” Abhilash says.
There is a darkness in the frames that reflects the times, and the music adds to the atmosphere, reflecting everything between despair and hope. “During the backstories, characters’ voices appear as a subtle background layer, and the music by Ouseppachan Sir has added a lyrical nature to the film,” he further adds.
Despite its unconventional form, the response so far has been encouraging, he says. “People are eager to watch experimental cinema,” Abhilash smiles.
The film has made rounds at smaller film festivals across Kerala, like the Dharshini International Film Festival organised by the Thunchath Ezhuthachan Malayalam University. Even though Krishnashtami did not make it to the IFFK’s last edition, unlike his previous projects such as the mockumentary, ‘Maayunnu, Maarivarayunnu, Nisvaasangalil…’, he is hopeful that the Moscow film fest will offer it a wider audience.