QUEEN'S ROAD: A Kannadiga filmmaker has won acclaim for his documentary on the inhumane practice of clipping birds’ wings to keep them captive.
N Maheshwarappa’s film, My Little Wings, won the International Award of Excellence at the International Film Festival of Environment, Health and Culture, Indonesia, earlier this month.
The documentary will see its third festival screening at the Croatian Film Festival, starting Friday. It was first screened at the International Film Festival of Prayag, Allahabad.
Maheshwarappa, a civil and structural engineer who hails from Channarayapatna in Hassan district, has been working in Abu Dhabi for eight years now. While there, he has pursued a filmmaking course at the city’s New York Film Academy. My Little Wings is the 37-year-old’s third project.
The film was shot during a business trip Maheshwarappa took to South Korea. “I was walking in Korea’s oldest market called Dongdaemun in Seoul. They sell all kinds of household items and pet animals there,” he said. He was surprised to notice that some vendors kept their birds in an open container. “I asked a vendor how come they don’t fly away. And he said the feathers on their wings have been cut so they can’t fly.”
Shocked, the filmmaker saw this as the subject of his next documentary. He put a 15-member team in place, including Bengaluru-based advertising professional Tarun Ravi Kiran who wrote the script, and started work. He’s grateful for the support they received from the natives and the wildlife rescue centre there.
"This practice in illegal in Korea, but is still carried out by many pet vendors. It is in vogue in a number of other countries, including the USA," Maheshwarappa said. "Popular animation director Dir Ann and wife Dir Han also helped us out, and we also worked at their studio MWP (Meditation With Pencil)."
Maheshwarppa's plans to do a commercial film in Kannada for which pre-production has begun. "I will move to Bengaluru, where my mother lives, soon so that Tarun and I can work on it together," he said.
Tarun is also raring to go. "It feels great to be a part of a budding team that has already won an international film award. Mahesh (Maheshwarappa) deserves a major chunk of the credit," he told City Express.
The film looks at wing-clipping from the birds' perspective — the thought of being deprived of their most innate ability can't just be explained; it needs to be experienced, Tarun believes.
