A director’s well-thought, carefully-visualised frames speak volumes on screen. Sourab Kumar had thought of this when he stepped into the shoes of a director for his debut short film Beyond the Clouds, which after its release in mid-October became a talk among young and amateur filmmakers for its visual beauty. Ten years after working as a medical transcriptionist, Sourab decided to pursue his filmmaking dreams. “Being a BA English Literature student, I’ve never studied filmmaking, nor have I assisted anyone as my situations did not allow me to. But filmmaking was always close to my heart,” he recalls.
Beyond the Clouds has a pensive mood to it. The movie is about a man who is introspecting on his 40th birthday. The film shows the little things in life that help shape a person. “Life as a whole is what inspired me to do this film. I have tried to tell the story majorly through its visuals rather than dialogue,” he says. But why did dialogue take a backseat? And Sourab says, “Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven is the movie that inspired me to take up filmmaking. Wong Kar Wai and Andrei Tarkovsky are the other two filmmakers whose styles have inspired me greatly. Lesser dialogues and better visuals are the major highlights of their works; I too have applied the same.”
Sourab talks about the team that produced his short film. “It was my friends from Silver Hills Public School who helped my dream come true. They are from the batch of 1995, hence the name ‘Batch 95 Production’. My friend Shyjil along with the other batchmates pooled money to make this happen.” Sourab is currently working on a script for a full-length Malayalam commercial movie. “Venturing into commercial cinema is the way to establish yourself in the industry. The script is getting prepared. I have a mainstream actor in mind, but I have miles to go before all that could happen.” Sourab has a dream project too — a documentary on the lives of sadhus in the Himalayan Valley.
