Short films created within two days,as part of the international The 48 Hour Film Project in Delhi,will be screened this weekend A host of young film-makers were in for a sleepless weekend on the night of September 2,when The 48 Hour Film Project kicked off at the India Habitat Centre. So what is the big deal about a 48-hour film festival? Those participating in the competition write,shoot,edit and produce a film in 48 hours. If they are a minute late,the film cannot enter the competition. Some filmmakers feel that the 48-hour deadline is a restriction,but according to Preeti Gopalkrishnan,co-producer of the festival,the adrenaline rush is challenging. Along with her husband,Yogi Chopra,she has brought the festival to Delhi this year. The festival has been around for ten years,and in this decade,hundreds of 48-hour weekends have produced 13,000 films across 100 cities. This is the first time that the festival is being held in Delhi. The jury comprising Nagesh Kukunoor,Manish Jha,Ashwin Kumar and KS Chakravarthy is busy deciding the fate of 34 teams,which are anticipating the results,that will be announced on September 18. The screening of all the films will also happen then. The registered teams were given a prop,a character,a line of dialogue and a genre at random,around which they had to construct their film. The excitement was palpable as the teams waited with bated breath for their subjects, recalls Gopalakrishnan. Once that was done,the 48-hours began and the teams set off to make their films against a ticking clock. Prashant Sehgal and his team members,Subhashani and Vininay knew how to budget their time well. Theirs was the third team to meet the deadline. This is our third shot at the competition and we even managed to get a few hours of sleep over the weekend, he says. Their film,Each Time the Door Closes,is a romantic drama about the love story of a prostitute and a painter. Zoya Parvin and her team 5:1 Films submitted their movie,Miss Reality,barely a minute before the deadline. It was intense fun, recalls Parvin,who is currently studying film-making at Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi . The drop-off,the moment when the teams had to submit their films,spelt chaos. People took on Delhi traffic,cursed their slow computers which refused to burn their DVDs and even lost mobile phones to meet the 8:00 pm deadline. 8:01 was a minute too late. Out of the 50 registered teams,34 met the deadline,ten were late and there were six no shows. The ten late entries will be screened but cannot take part in the competition, confirmed Chopra. The screenings and award-announcements will be held at Iskcon Auditorium,East of Kailash. Log on to www.48hfp.in
