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Journalism of Courage
The risk of working on an open-ended story is that it may lead to multiple interpretations of plot and characterisation. That didn’t stop Pune-based Anupam Barve from working on his short film Afternoon in 2012.
The idea of the 12-minute-long abstract film struck Barve on a lazy afternoon. “When a friend and I decided to work on a particular feature project, we would do all the brainstorming and writing work in a flat on Prabhat Road. The room was nearly empty with minimal furniture and the ambient light in the room during the afternoons was magical. I tried to capture that mood,” says Barve, “Afternoon is the product of one of those warm, empty afternoons; when you neither like being left to yourself nor do you like being compelled to speak. When you want someone around, yet desire solitude and privacy.”
The film has been shortlisted for the 7th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (July 18 – 22), was showcased at New York Indian Film Festival in May this year and the Smita Patil Film Festival in December 2013.
Its exclusivity lies not just in its abstract plot but also in its treatment; Barve has consciously used minimum dialogues in the film. “While some people feel that there is just one character in the film, some see more than one. But that’s the beauty of abstraction; one doesn’t have to depend on others’ interpretations,” says Barve, who has worked as an assistant director for Bombay Talkies (2012).
Afternoon stars Anjali Patil and Ashmit Pathare. Barve’s central character, Patil, revisits her inner and outer spaces. The decision of employing minimal dialogues, he says, gelled with the theme and the character. “Without hinging on dialogues, I wanted to see how relations evolve and end,” says Barve, who takes inspiration from films by Jiri Menzel, Atom Egoyan and Woody Allen.
Pune-born Barve did his masters in film direction from University of Westminster, London in 2009. Among other documentaries and feature films in his kitty, Fresh Suicide (2010), which was showcased at several film festivals both in India and abroad, told the story of a young Indian translator and an American journalist, who reports on farmers’ suicides in rural India.
Barve teaches film direction at Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication (Pune), FLAME (Pune) and Digital Academy (Mumbai).
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