THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In Adhiti Chitre’s animation films, humans look like humans and houses look like houses. While those hi-tech special effects that zap you out of your seats are missing, Adhiti’s films have that wonderful quality of story-telling about them. Adhiti also shows no hesitation to portray emotions, something not usually seen in this genre of films. Probably the very reason why her film, ‘Journey to Nagaland’, bagged the award for the best animation film here at the 4th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), that concluded here recently.The film also got her and her friend Pritam Das a special jury mention for sound design at the film festival. “In my first film, ‘The Mall on Top of My House’, I got interested in using sound to portray some scenes which I could not otherwise. Then it became a passion,’’ said the small-built lass whose outlets of creativity include painting and art workshops, apart from film-making.Trained in painting, graduating in fine arts from Baroda, Adhiti, who did her post-graduation in Pondicherry, never learnt animation in a formal way. “In a way, I think it is good that I was not trained in animation, for, I focus more on story-telling. For me, making films is a kind of home-cooked affair, where backgrounds are all hand-drawn and almost all the characters and images growing out of a deep thought process,” said Adhiti, who took over two years to complete the film.It was Pankaj Rishi Kumar, the renowned film-maker and curator of the ‘Running in the Family’ package at the festival, who supported and mentored Adhiti throughout the making of the film. “Rishi is an amazing person, who taught me that films are not about technology but about the idea and story-telling,” said Adhiti.Her film, ‘Journey to Nagaland’, is all about a young girl who is led to a distant land by the force of her vision of her mother’s spirit. “It is about two people - a mother who was brought up in the hills but wanted to migrate to the city and a daughter who wanted to migrate back from the city. The girl sees images of Nagaland in a dream. I have used folk tales, folk songs and myths to tell the story,’’ she said.Adhiti herself grew up in the bustling city of Mumbai. But it was a trip to the misty hills of Nagaland on a holiday that inspired her to make a film. Adhiti was so awed by the lush landscape, the people and the culture that it sparked off an urge to express.So how much of Adhiti Chitre do we get to see in the movie, we ask. “For me its an ongoing journey. Initially it was the awe that I felt for the beautiful hills. Then I came closer to the political realities, the social realities and was shocked to hear about the atrocities happening in my own country. Yet there are so many layers, so much more to discover,’’ said Adhiti.The main story is based on a real-life incident in the 1940s, when a grandmother decided to turn an entrepreneur and started sourcing beads from Gujarat for sale in Kohima.The Mumbai girl answers to the call of the mountains every now and then. Fortunately, the frequent art projects and workshops that she conducts there make it possible for her to continue the association. And Adhiti’s journey to Nagaland continues.
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