BENGALURU: A student collective is out to make shorts in the film noir style and bring in change in an industry dominated by the more commercial genres.
United by their love for cinema, a group of friends — Akshay Sidharth, Athulya Madhu, Limson Antony, Augustine Hemrom, Anoop Alexander, Madhuri Rajendran and Anmi Elizabeth Sabu — from Christ University have came together ToteMotion Creative. The group, its founding members all admirers of Christopher Nolan, is named after a device in his directorial Inception. The second half of the name stands for motion pictures.
ToteMotion Creatives released its first film, The Eleventh Hour, on its YouTube channel last month. The film was written and directed by Akshay Sidharth.
The 13-minuter was first screened last August at Taala Studio. It has since bagged the the first place in a St Joseph’s College short film competition, finished as the runner-up in ninth edition of inernational film festival Panchajanyam at Chittoor, Kerala, and was the official selection in the Take One short film competition at Ragam, a fest organised by NIT Calicut.
The film follows a man, played by Anoop Alexander, in pursuit of redemption for his past deeds. The film, shot in monochrome over five days, was has six lines of dialogue, two onscreen characters and another voice. So it relies mostly on execution and performance.
Taut though the film may be, the creative process took the cast and crew nine months, which they juggled with their hectic college schedule.
“Eleventh Hour was born out of love for cinema,” says Akshay. “My research paper analysed Anurag Kashyap’s films. Their hard-hitting reality appealed to me.”
He also wanted dabble in the film noir genre in the small format. “This form, intense and dark, was popular between the 1940s and 1960s,” he adds.
With no dedicated producer, the students alone had to collectively invest. “We had to borrow from people to made this happen,” says the film’s assistant director Athulya Madhu.
She quotes Walt Disney: “’We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.’ We will pursue our dream.”
ToteMotion Creatives is working on its next, Case 44, a 10 to 15-minute film with interrogation and suspense.
“We are trying to reduce the number of shots, making each shot long, which is challenging,” says Akshay. “As of now, the film will be shot in a single setting, and have a very realistic feel.”
ToteMotion specialises in zero-budget, experimental films. Its members welcome others with similar leanings.
