The silhouette of camaraderie: the film before every film

The silhouette of camaraderie: the film before every film

Gokul  P

Movie viewing culture owes a lot to the shadow puppetry of our ancestors in this God’s own country. Members of the older generation still recollect their childhood memories at temples and special occasions where they watched mythological characters projected by the flickering of oil lamps. The science behind movie projection also owes much to this most traditional method of projecting images on screen to tell stories. The master director of Malayalam, G Aravindan, recognized this bondage between puppetry and cinema which inspired him to design the logo of International Film Festival of Kerala with a lady character from the shadow puppetry. Here is another set of youngsters following their predecessor by making the signature film of 16th IFFK based on the same theme of shadow puppetry.

  ‘The Silhouettes  of Camaraderie’, a 32sec film is a journey through the history of visual language which had evolved in different parts of the world and have distinctive characteristic features of respective cultures to which they belong. It is a salute and a tribute to those great cultural entities representing the urge of humankind to make images for expressing ‘the inexpressible’ and communicating it with other fellow beings. “The film is a blend of visuals comprising 3D and 2D images”, said Bijoy Balachandran, a member of the Blueberries Animation team and the director of the signature film. Bijoy Balachandran is an artist, designer and film maker. His film “In Search Of” premiered at the international short film festival “Signs” conducted by the federation of film societies of India. He has to his credit several projects in various fields such as graphic designing, hologram production, signature films etc and has also worked as the course co-ordinator (3D animation) for Indian Human Resource Development Authority.

  Compositing work was done by Binesh G.S, a technical and creative expert in the field of 2D and 3D animation. He was the head of the department of Texturing andTechnical direction, Trine Entertainments Ltd, Malad, Mumbai and ED- Ventures E- Learning Pvt.Ltd, Secunderabad.

  Suvarna who did the illustration and texturing of the film is a critically acclaimed painter and graphic artist . She has also worked as an illustrator for children’s publications and as an art teacher at various schools. Research and script of ‘The Silhouettes of Camaraderie’ was done by Bipin Balachandran who is a creative writer, art historian and documentary director.  Editing and sound was done under the supervision of Praveen VR and the music score was done by ‘fly council’, a Thiruvananthapuram based music band.

  The challenge for this team of young artists was to portray the diversity in culture within a limited span of time. The popular mascot of IFFK, ‘chakoram’ or the crow pheasant takes a 32 seconds flight from the state’s own ‘Tholpaavakoothu’(original version of shadow puppetry in Kerala) to the wayang goleks and wayang kulets of Java through Arabia, Japan, Korea, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia and India.