A homegrown production’s recent journey to Cannes with their labour of love, is a heartfelt ode to showcase the passion for cinema, and Mumbai
The area around Worli Fort served as one of the primary locations for the film’s shooting
Enmeshed in a crisscross of time zones and countries, it is right before a flight to Amsterdam when we manage to get on a call with city-based director Nihar Palwe and music composer Adith Anande. Fresh from the screening of their film, The Storm, The Calm, The Madness, The Magic at the Cannes Film Festival and a world premiere at the British Film Institute (BFI) Imax, the group is now embarking on a well-deserved, leisurely vacation in European cities.
“It has been quite a journey for all of us. When we got to know about the selection, all of us were equally excited and nervous to see the film for the first time,” Palwe tells us as he explains how the three-minute-long flick is one of the films selected in the top eight of Straight 8, a UK-based filmmaking event where people from across the globe submit films shot entirely on a single Super 8mm cartridge. “Ours is the first Indian film to be slotted in the top eight in 25 years since the event’s inception,” the hint of pride in the director’s voice is palpable, and rightly so. To imagine a film being shot without post-production and a blind composition of the soundtrack, one probably needs to travel back to the era of silent filmmaking.
The entire film has been shot with a Zenit Quarz 1x8S-2 Super 8 camera
“It was a leap of faith for all of us on the team. As the event requires you to send the roll as it is, we collaborated with Harkat Studios to help us in transferring the cartridge to Cine Lab, a massive film laboratory in London, which then developed and processed the frames into the film,” Palwe explains.
Shot over a period of two days, the technicalities are much more complex than the duo tells us. With no retakes or playbacks, the work was measured up to the tee to ensure the film stitches well together. “We would have one person record the timing of each click of the camera, which denotes the frames per second, to have a rough idea of the scenes in the film. Then, a day before the final shoot, the team did a dress rehearsal on the location and shot the film with an Instagram filter to get the sequence right, and that was the sole blueprint for me to compose the soundtrack,” Anande reveals. A composer at the city-based collective Bombay Noor, Anande made sure that the soundtrack, which brings together the essence of the film, has a distinct Indian tonality to it. “The film starts with heavy hip-hop, and then transgresses into a sing-song zone, as we near the completion of the story. It was amazing to see people humming the tune after the screening ended,” the Lalbaug resident adds.
With actors Pritt Kamani and Aditi Sandhya Sharma leading the cast, the story takes viewers back to 1990s Bombay with the protagonist juggling an existential question, one which is not unknown to to the denizens of this city. “Though the film is more about the internal journey of the lead character and how he finds purpose in chaos, even if it is an imagined idea; the city appears as an important backdrop to his character arc. It is literally the ‘storm’ as mentioned in the title,” Palwe shares.
Inspired by Forced Hilarity, a Straight 8 film by English director Edgar Wright and conceived with fellow artistes who share a collective affinity for cinema, the film’s story mirrors the filmmaking process in more ways than one. “In its core, the story is about finding one’s reckoning and an emotional surrender towards life to arrive at one’s purpose — an idea that is extremely close to the challenging yet extremely fulfilling creative process of the film,” he tells us before signing off.
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