Animated Response

While a martial arts-loving giant panda from Kung Fu Panda and a dreamer zebra from Madagascar attracted attention at the recent SIGGRAPH Festival in Los Angeles with their star status, Delhi-based filmmaker Charuvi Agrawal cut through the fantasy and introduced demonic television in her 150-second film 10th Avatar.

While a martial arts-loving giant panda from Kung Fu Panda and a dreamer zebra from Madagascar attracted attention at the recent SIGGRAPH Festival in Los Angeles with their star status, Delhi-based filmmaker Charuvi Agrawal cut through the fantasy and introduced demonic television in her 150-second film 10th Avatar. Wings attached to its rectangular body and monstrous eyes popping from the monitor, the idiot box got an animated avatar as the marijuana of the visual world. 8220;This isn8217;t far-fetched. Everyone is hooked to the TV,8221; says Agrawal, 25, about her 3-D animation film.

Nominated in the short film category in several international competitions, including the Santa Fe Film Festival in New Mexico and the South Asian International Film Festival in New York, the film had its first screening in Delhi at the Films Division Auditorium on Saturday. Kamal Haasan would have been amused at this Dasavathaaram-meets-Orwell short, which begins with a group of devotees offering prayers to Krishna and then segues into an illusionary world where the deity descends on the earth as the tenth avatar in the form of a television set. And the new incarnation addresses Its worshippers through mythological serials.

Agrawal, who showed the movie only to select invitees and not a barrage of popcorn-clutching children, does not think animation films are kiddie stuff. 8220;The notion that animation is meant for children is rampant in India. It8217;ll take time for people to acknowledge that filmmakers are depicting mature issues through the medium,8221; she says. Little wonder that Agrawal, who graduated from the Delhi College of Art and did master8217;s in computer animation from Sheridan College, Canada, projected on the screen three films made over the past two years. While 10th Avatar harped on the overarching importance of television, Dream Magic, a four-minute film commissioned by the Canada National Film Board, had animation based on the etchings of documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, while Dundas n Bathrust depicted the diversity of Toronto in a minute. 8220;Each project was different in theme and treatment,8221; says Agrawal, who often refers to Indian folklore for inspiration. If the storyboard of 10th Avatar has reflections of Mughal miniature paintings, she is planning a mythological narrative in her next.

With animation on the forefront, the fine arts may have taken a backseat but Agrawal hopes to produce another set of miniature 3-D clay caricatures akin to the display at her solo exhibition at the India Habitat Centre two years ago. They had tongue-in-cheek taglines like 8220;Silence 8212; antarman ki aawaz8221; for Sonia Gandhi and 8220;I am a heavyweight. Don8217;t undermine me8221; for

J. Jayalalithaa8217;s caricature, but as she goes back to the storyboard, Agrawal assures that the forthcoming exhibition, which will take a jab at film stars, will be better. An animated response is, of course, welcome.