The Censor Board of India took a look through the film,Kalighat Fetish,and rejected it outright. Filmmaker Ashish Avikunthak,40,was so disillusioned with the system that when he made his next film,Dancing Othello,in 2002,he did not even apply to the censor board for clearance. Both these films are now being screened at a film festival called Filament at the Experimenter art gallery in Kolkata. Filament is an attempt to put 20 years of experimental filmmaking on one platform. It should have happened 20 years ago and the fact that there isnt such a tradition is very sad. Better late than never. Four of us will be featured through four weeks and its a very radical gesture that our films,many of which have failed to get the Censor Boards approval,will run for a week each, says Avikunthak. The month-long festival began on August 14. While Kalighat Fetish unspools the life of a Bohurupee who dresses up like Goddess Kali,and the practice of animal sacrifice at Kalighat temple in south Kolkata,Dancing Othello documents the life of a Kathakali dancer,Peter Pillay,and his relationship with William Shakespeare. The other filmmakers in the festival are Ranu Ghosh,Nilanjan Bhattacharya and Ruchir Joshi. The filmmakers are bound by the thematic concerns of the city of Kolkata. Bhattacharya will present two video loops and a short film on the Bengali passion for fish and is curious to know the dynamics of how these films,which were not made keeping in mind patrons of a gallery,work in such a space. Joshi,a Kolkata boy,presents an eight-minute-long exploration of the city in his film Tales from Planet Kolkata. Ghosh,on the other hand,prefers not to use the term film for her section,which will be featured next week. It is a looped video installation on post-industrialisation and the resistance to private development at the cost of public welfare. The shots of this video date back to 2004 and is still on, she explains.
