Silver Connection

Gamat’s film Urnanaabh,which translates as ‘the one who weaves a web from his own navel’, also won an award at the Kodak Film School Cinematography National Competition which was held in the US this year. “This was my diploma film project. We began shooting in December 2009 but completed it only in July last year,” says Gamat. The 21-minute movie is based on the Japanese short story Shisei written by Tanizaki. “The story is of a tattoo artiste who develops an odd connection with the woman who cleans his studio. “If one chooses to look beyond the obvious,it tells the story of the human desire to connect with another person and the extent to which one would go to make that happen,” she says.

Gamat won the silver trophy in the ‘Excellence in Short Fiction’ section,while Joshi won the silver trophy in the ‘Excellence in Animation’ section. A third film Utsav by the animation students of FTII also won a Special Jury Mention. Joshi’s animated film showed how memories of a happy childhood are slowly erased under the garb of modernisation. “A little girl who remembers her home and the greenery has to be content with the fact that they will only be memories and nothing will be the same again. The greener has been replaced by the cement jungle around her,” Joshi says. Her film was also screened at the 4th Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala and was selected for Chitrakatha ’11 – the third edition of the International Student Animation Festival of Gujarat.

Post this recognition,Gamat is working on a couple of scripts and is completing the post production for a documentary that she shot in Arunachal Pradesh. “My style of film-making is very different from commercial cinema. I am happy doing this as of now,” she says.