Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
On a Saturday evening Kolkata-based filmmaker Sourav Sarangi,45,received a panicky phone call from his wife to organise a hospital bed for an eight-month-old boy with a serious head injury. This child went on to become a subject of a heartrending documentary thats captured the imagination of the world. Sarangis Bilal is a film shot entirely in a tiny,dank room in Kolkatas Taltala,a working class neighbourhood where Bilal lives with his blind parents.
The boys life fascinated me. He knows how to communicate with his parents through sound and touch. Also he is never aimless. Either hes guiding his blind parents through the traffic or getting into mischief with his brother Hamza, says Sarangi who is an FTII alumnus and has been making documentaries for 20 years. The 88-minute film has been made after editing 160 hours of footage. The film is not issue-based and I am not trying to resolve a problem. I have just observed Bilal closely, says Sarangi who also adds that this type of story comes with its own set of challenges,namely,narrating it without any clearly defined set of ideas and giving a structure to the humdrum moments of life.
So far Bilal has received acclaim at several national and international film festivals like the Golden Award at the Al Jazeera International Documentary Festival,Silver Ace at Las Vegas International Film Festival and Silver Palm at Mexico International Film Festival.
The IIC will be organising a screening of Bilal in October.
Contact: 011-26273244
Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
