Thiruvananthapuram: Like in the previous years, he came to Thiruvananthapuram when it was time for the International Film Festival of Kerala. But this time Naranipuzha Shanavas was not watching films as much. He had one of his own to look after, one that’s been welcomed at many places, including his beloved IFFK. “The festival is not one of the reasons that made me want to become a filmmaker, it is the only reason,” he says.
Shanavas has been coming for the IFFK from north Malabar for 15 or so years now. “In the beginning it was only about 300 or 400 of us who would take the long distance trains and come here. But now thousands come every year.” Like any newcomer to the IFFK, watching world cinema has been a revelation for Shanavas. He found a sea of difference between Malayalam cinema and world cinema. “The language, the sound, it was like aamayum muyalum (tortoise and rabbit), the difference,” he says, but does not specify which is the ‘aama’ and which, the ‘muyal’. “You also learn to watch cinema closely, carefully. You enjoy all parts of it.” Like how he learnt about spot recording and its possibilities. “It is a huge difference when you record a character talking on the set, and when you record him later in an AC room.”
He became an editor, a short filmmaker and finally a feature filmmaker, directing a critically acclaimed film like ‘Karie’, all thanks to the IFFK influence.
“Those seven days have been a celebration.” At first he was influenced a lot to make films like the masters he saw. So when he first wrote the script of his feature film ‘Karie’ it had been inspired by those he admired. But then watching the Turkish drama ‘Once upon a time in Anatolia’ had changed his perception.
“That is when I understood that there is no format, no grammar that needed to be followed when you make a film. You can take it any way you want to,” he says. Karie therefore got rewritten into something only Shanavas could write. “If you notice, a lot of our parallel films may follow the style of our masters like Adoor Gopalakrishnan.” Ironically, he could not get his film screened at the IFFK, the fest which had influenced him to make one in the first place.
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