Raveendran will forever play some foot-tapping film music inside Malayali cine-goers’ head. His reappearance in the 2010s after a pretty-long hiatus from mainstream cinema in the mid 1990s was as Disco Douglas in Kili Poyi, where he danced to new gen music. Raveendran can’t stop dancing and he is doing it again for the film Cappuccino’s in the song Midukki Midukki. Where hides his energy powerhouse? “My energy, it comes from promoting others,” pat comes the reply.
The answer tells a lot about Raveendran, the unknown. A comeback edition and a couple of memorable performances didn’t satiate the film enthusiast in him. For the past three years, he has devoted himself to uplifting aspiring filmmakers among Indian diaspora, offering them a screening space in the form of film festivals. A continuation to the Kochi Metro Short Film Festival, he went on to find more talents aiming to address various issues they face.
“It’s been about a year since Arabian Frames (short film festival) had an edition in the Middle East. We had decided on creating the chapters abroad, as part of the Metro Short Film Festival and thus opened our Gulf chapter. The short movies done by the expats had been to more than 50 campuses in the state. The bigger aim is to communicate expat issues through movies,” says Raveendran.
Sixty of them came to the Arabian Frames festival in Kozhikode. Prior to that, they were screened at Perinthalmanna towards the end of 2016.
Whenever he disappeared from films, Raveendran had not gone anywhere. He remained an active player behind the scenes. Those in the close circuits know him as a ready-to-answer film encyclopaedia. He has been instrumental in elevating cinema to a newer level in academics.
Raveendran says that a film like What the Bleep Do We Know!? may give a better understanding of quantum physics or the complexities of architecture could be learned through Eisenstein movies. He is confident that literature, management studies, psychology and philosophy, could be taught through movies.
“I started my research after Pappayude Swantham Appoos. It has been about 20 years now. Through cinema, many subjects can be reinforced in a student’s mind. If Lagaan teaches team building, Chak De! India speaks about raising a normal team to a winning one. Gandhi was shown in IIMs. History is taught through movies in America. The language of 21st century for communication is visual. My focus is on visual literacy,” says he.
