When a group of friends come together, it will undoubtedly bring about moments of laughter, sadness, anger and love. And then follows countless moments of light-hearted chit-chats on topics ranging from classroom gossips to academics and future aspirations. For a bunch of friends from Kochi, these meetings and chit chat sessions would always come around to the topic of movies and filmmaking. This love for films has fetched them a recognition for their short film Ridiculous which was selected as the Best Campus film in the recently conducted International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, 2013 (IDSFFK).
Ridiculous was one among the final five shortlisted short films in the category.
The short film which is a humourous take on some of the grave topics like the influence of technology, the refreshingly cool attitude of human relationships and the ability of some people to complicate even the simplest of things. The story revolves around a boy and a girl who have been in a relationship for around four years. Both of them are hesitant to disclose this relationship to their parents. But somehow the boy’s father discovers it. His father befriends his girlfriend on Facebook. Through FB chats, the father tells the girl that he is ok and has accepted their relationship. He also asks the girl not to disclose this information to his son. However, both father-son duo living under the same roof are hesitant to come out with the matter into the open. And finally the son decides to tell his father about his lady love through a short film that he plans to make with the help of his friend. This is the crux of the eight-minute short film which pans into the storyline through a series of hilarious dialogue exchange between two friends. “The film is inspired from a true life incident. And while deciding how to proceed with the story, we decided to bring in a novel approach and hence shot the plot through a series of conversations that takes the film forward,” says scriptwriter Rakesh N Sankar who is a final year CA student.
Interestingly, the short film begins with a sequence from the Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom with his usual tantrums falls prey to his own trap that that he sets for Jerry.
Another intersting shot that catches your eye is the opening scene which starts with Ernest Hemingway’s satirical quote- “An onion is an onion is an onion is a stone is a stein is a rock is a boulder is a pebble.” Ask Rakesh about the relevance, he says, “Throughout the movie we have tried to play on metaphors to express the underlying facts. We have placed the cartoon in the beginning of the film to show how a series of unwanted and stupid actions can complicate even the simplest of things,” says Rakesh.
The film helmed by Abhishek K S, an animation student, speaks about the success story of the group of eight friends whose film journey began when they were studying in Maharajas College.
“From the first year at Maharajas, we have been making short films and this is our seventh film,” says Noel Raphel, one of the team members. Last year, in an online short film festival, En frienda pola yaaru machan was adjudged the Best Popular short film and this year their team has bagged a special jury award for another one of their short films titled # Trendy.