BENGALURU: The lockdown might have slowed down the plans of many, but there is no stopping for documentary maker Vinod Rajendra. The city-based filmmaker came up with his 12th short film, titled IMAD, during this period. The experimental-philosophical Kannada movie is set to be featured at the 9th Kolkata Shorts International Film Festival-2020, scheduled to take place on July 19.
The movie was completely shot in isolation during the lockdown. “It revolves around how discrimination among people starts from a single thought but evolves into something big when it’s layered with ego, jealousy, etc,” says. Although physical distancing did bring its own constraints, the 29-year-old director says it also pushed him to try different ways of filmmaking. “The biggest challenge we went through was not being able to see what the other person was working on.
We had to wait till it was done and decide if we can take it or change it,” says Rajendra. Since they faced a lot of issues about shooting, the team decided to make it in a VFX illustration format, with voice-over done by actor Adhvithi Shetty. “Vinod and I have been discussing about doing an experimental project for quite a while. Over many discussions, we decided to do a complete work-from-home short film with illustration,” says Shetty.
Before IMAD, Rajendra’s last project was Arangetram, a short film based on the journey of a girl who takes up Bharatnatyam professionally and the struggles that follow. The movie was to be featured at Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards which was initially scheduled for April 2020 but has now been pushed to August 2020 due to the pandemic.
“I am also submitting Arangetram for the National Film Awards in the category of cultural films,” says Rajendra, who took over a month to make the eight-minute movie, which sparked controversy over the title. “After people objected to the name Arangetram, I had to change it to Dry Leaf. But since it was already submitted to many festivals, the older name has stuck too,” he explains.
Rajendra has more than 12 international film awards in his kitty, and his movies, Change, and Lepakshi hold two Guinness records for most dubbed short fiction and most dubbed short documentary, respectively. He is now working on the scripts of two features films – Knight of the Deccan Region and The Last Bridge.