HYDERABAD: Independent film-making is a craft in itself. It’s craftsmen have to go that extra-mile to add every tinge to make it the way they had dreamt of. Some make it for themselves, some make it for a cause, while others make it for their audience. One such craftsman is Karthik Subbaraj, an engineer-turned- filmmaker, who makes films for his creative satisfaction. He started making movies when he was 25 and in a short span of three years his movies have represented India on a global platform. His movie Black and White has received immense response at the Shortshorts Film Festival Asia held in Tokyo this year.Of the 583 movies selected for the festival, 17 movies were short-listed, out of which Black and White was the only movie produced in India. This short film festival is accredited by the Academy Awards and the winner was eligible for a direct entry into the Oscars. Unfortunately his movie could not make it to the Oscars, but Black and White did bring a lot of colour to India.“I had always dreamt of being a director since my childhood,” says Karthik, whose first movie, Outpourings, a one-minute movie was created as a part of a Film Camp Academy workshop in Bangalore. After that came a series of shortfilms like --- Who’s the India, React, Dark Game, Last Train, Raja Rani and Parallax, that were made on a varied range of subjects and most of them were message-oriented.He was awarded the “Best Director of the series” in “Nalaya Iyyakunar”, a reality show which was aired on Kalaignar TV. Black and White was created in the course of the reality show.Talking about his experience at the Tokyo festival, he says, “The experience was amazing and the platform on which my movie was screened is really big. We got positive response from the viewers. Some liked the ending and some expressed they did not want an abrupt ending,” adding, “The other movies at the festival were equally good. The amount of experience the directors had was great to see.” His production house, Stone Bench Productions is a five-man army and each person handles a different aspect of the film-making --- like cinematography by Manikandan, editing by Alphonse Puthren, Prasath, the associate director and Bobby Jayasimha, an actor, Rajesh Murugeshan handles music and sound design is handled by Vishnu.“It is my team’s effort which made this movie go places,” Karthik confesses.The Independent film makers in India face a major financial problem. Most of them bear the expenses themselves which indeed gets tougher to recover.“None of our movies till now have been commercial.I invested all my earnings,” says Karthik, adding “All the actors we hire for our movies work for us out of passion.” “There are very few platforms available for shortfilm directors in India when compared to other countries. Other directors at the Shortshorts festival were funded by their governments and their embassy people visited the venues where the movies were screened,” he adds. According to him, shortfilm making is still not treated as a serious profession in India and the government should recognise the efforts of such film-makers and support them in their little ways. “Film-making must be elevated as a creative art form and this would be possible only with the efforts of the government. We have a category for short films in our National Awards. Directors can send in entries only when there is enough publicity,” says the filmmaker.He says his dream movie was to direct a novel Kallikaatu Ithigasam by Vairamuthu and wants to cast Rajnikanth for the lead role of the movie.
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