Life is a stage and we all are actors. Where we keep performing 24*7. This applies to everyone. Every day we are a different person, behave differently at different points of time. And in every character our behaviour-personality keeps changing. You must be aware by now of the fact that our new language is films. Hence to internalize the varied aspects of film, from watching films to discussing about it, we do all- and simultaneously we keep shooting films. We jolly well understand that through films we not only capture our real life in the reels but rather in the process keep building ourselves as well. We sharpen our life skill or soft skill. We try to find parity between our viewpoint on gender or rights and the actual reality. A sense of responsibility quite naturally percolates within us as we now wear the cap of director, editor, production controller, distributor or actor. It seems that somewhere someone, remaining invisible, keep changing our stereotypical and orthodox mentality. And it is through this invisible masterminding that there emerges life-cinema like Abhishar, Sakha or Dhop. To be precise, it can be said that we ourselves are writing our own stories.
Bad and Beautiful World is a film festival that gives national and international student filmmakers the opportunity to participate in a challenging and fun initiative. They can send in their short films to compete for best film during the BBW Festival. The committee will carefully select the best movies, which will be screened at our festival. There is no specific theme for the films topic. During the festival there will be a jury to select the best film overall. The aim is to make students aware of what other students can achieve through film. The short films offer an opportunity to view the world from a different perspective, based on other cultural backgrounds. The unique part of BBW Short Film Festival is that it is a cultural event that is organized by and for national and international students.
Short films are the haiku of cinema. The medium insists that you be rigorous in how much you can speak in the story and in how short a time. It’s a great way to practice your craft. The short film tests the rigour of every medium of cinema. At the moment, Short Film Format is the place to be. Things change from generation to generation. This generation absorbs things faster so they want to express immediately. You have to say a lot in a very short time. In feature films you start telling the story only in the 3rd or 4th reel - first you build up the plot, time is taken to develop characters, there is song and dance and then you come to the actual story. But in the short you just come straight to the point. A short film is a maker’s manner of experiment. It can be very challenging to work in a short format. It has to be hard-hitting, concise and good. What they convey to us within 3-10 minutes, others can take up to three hours. And so like bees to a hive, shorts are attracting amateurs and professionals alike.
What is feeding the trend is a combination of the following: emerging platforms, new audiences, and a growing demand for content. Both small and prestigious film festivals are now regularly setting aside time slots to accommodate shorts since they garner full houses. Multiplex chains such as PVR are picking up short films and screening them in theatres and viewers are lining up to pay and watch. Numerous online platforms - Humara Movie, Pocket Films, YouTube, Terribly Tiny Tales, Large Short Films, Hot Star and several others – are luring more and more visitors to their sites offering great content for free or nominal subscriptions
Why do Prayasam Visual Basics keep asking for ‘real’ people and not actors? Non-professionals are better because they don’t act. They don’t protect their ability, and they aren’t confused by what acting should or should not be or look like, they just are. This makes them much more natural on screen than people ‘acting’. Professional actors tend to ‘act’, and by act, I mean ‘consciously pretend’. Now they don’t know that they are, because they can’t see their own performance, but if you look, you can see them ‘acting’, you can see them doing it. You see, trying to be a character, is the most self conscious thing you can possibly do, because you are always aware that you are trying to be other than yourself, and you have to consciously be different, making you instantly unnatural. You see, if you want to act for the screen, acting is the very last thing you need to do. The struggle is in representing the character and their journey, but non-professional actors don’t trouble themselves with all the hokey shenanigans that professionals believe help them perform. They simplify rather than complicate. In the world of film and television, we expect to treat what’s happening as absolutely real, so we crave total authenticity, and the camera is very unkind, it will punish you for faking it. This makes the job of the actor even harder, even the camera hates ‘acting’. So when they cast real people, they don’t get that, they don’t get histrionics, they don’t get ‘my method and motivation’ actors, desperate to prove they are artists. Real people just get on with it, without pretend, without fuss, they just do it.
There’s a saying which many of us have heard: "Love like in the movies." But sometimes, real life is the best inspiration for film-makers interested in the subject of love. Incredible love stories happen for real in plenty of people’s lives — the kind of romances which no screenwriter could ever dream up. And sometimes, these experiences become the basis for great movies. There is no “best” romantic movie. Something is funny when someone laughs, or romantic when their heart swells, for better or for worse, and we have no right to say why one of these should top another. The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.
This year our 5th Bad and Beautiful World short Film Festival boasts of 8 such short-films
