indie filmmaker Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s film has bagged more than a dozen honours internationally and two national awards. aditya says his aim is to express. The medium is only relative.
His debut feature, Labour of Love (Asha Jaoar Majhe) has already bagged more than a dozen honours internationally including the prestigious jury prize at the Venice Film Festival and on the domestic front, two National Awards. But indie filmmaker Aditya Vikram Sengupta firmly believes that the weight of positive resonance with even a single member of the audience can never be matched by any award in the world. And if reviews and responses are anything to go by, then Sengupta’s film, which released last week across major cities in the country, has managed to resonate with a lot more than just one.
While his impressive debut has marked his presence across film circles already, the filmmaker refuses to make the medium his identity. Dabbling in art, design and occasionally even music, his exploits, says Aditya, are merely as natural as “sneezing when your nose feels ticklish”. Telling us about his journey in art, Aditya says, “The aim, first and above all, is to express. The medium is only relative.”
Brought up in Kolkata, with an educational background in literature and design, Aditya says his ideals about art largely spring from his own liberal upbringing. “I studied in a Jesuit school that presented a mix of cultures. I was always surrounded by art in my growing up years. So not only was there a strong support group, even my parents never put as much weight on academic performance — which led to my exploring various forms of art including theatre, art and music.”
After a two-year stint with Literature, Aditya became a student of the prestigious National Institute of Design for four years. “Taking up NID was actually like an expression of the coming into adolescence of my disinterest. Which is why I will never say that my background is design. Even filmmaking was never my plan from the beginning. I wanted to learn as many ways to express what I felt,” he says.
While the awards that his debut has bagged so far are enough to make any filmmaker go green with envy, Aditya says that a lot of it banks on luck. “At a time, there are 3-4 jury members judging the film. They are all extremely knowledgeable and possess immense understanding of the concept of filmmaking in general.
But when it comes to experiencing the film, it only means that the film is being seen by an audience of 3-4 people and audience is audience — whether or not they are jury members, the idea is to connect with them. Which is why I believe that the biggest validation I can get for my film is from the audience.” Aditya adds, “I was initially apprehensive about how the people in my city (Kolkata) will receive the film as that is its setting. However, the response I’ve gotten so far has been really heartwarming. So much so that on some occasions, the film was shown full house on Mondays in some screens.”
Telling us about his film and the themes it explores, Aditya says, “I never had a target group for my audience. Instead what I’ve tried to achieve with this film is to get people to choose the film as their target. The central idea of the feature is ‘love’. But the love I’ve explored is the one that remains when all the lofty ideals and romantic notions surrounding it are peeled off. This project was an attempt to express the love I’ve always felt around me, right from childhood. My parents or my relatives never hugged each other or spent time expressing their love through words.
Their love was expressed in mundane and objective acts and was more to do with a unique tension that surrounded it. So it was heavily political in the sense that there was always a conflict. This is the love that I’ve explored.” “Even in my characters, I’ve hardly portrayed any depth of personality. Their names or characters are irrelevant. They are merely just bodies waiting to be lived by the audience themselves. In that way I have left a lot of personal holes for the audience to fill and interact with,” adds Aditya.
Telling us about his current exploits, Aditya says, “Right now I am involved in painting and will soon be exhibiting those works as well. I am also working on another feature in which I want to express the disconnect I feel with my city. The generations have changed and so has the city. But this has also brought about a sense of alienation. Right now, it is not clear as to what this alienation is, whether it is angst or something else. I want to explore this concept as a movie as it is something that I closely feel and hence feel the need to express.”
