My Friend Su
INDIA / 2001 / English, Hindi / Color / Video / 55 min
Director: Neeraj Bhasin
Photography, Editing: Siddarth Kumar
Sound: Ankur Tewari
Production Companies: Ihsan Talkies, Digital Talkies
Source, World Sales: Digital Talkies
21st Floor, Ambadeep Building, 14 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi, 110001 INDIA
Phone: 91-11-3310852, 3329444
Fax: 91-11-3329441
E-mail: SiddharthKumar@digitaltalkies.com
URL: www.digitaltalkies.com
Traditional Indian and contemporary trance music set the mood for a night with Su, the filmmaker’s friend from a few years ago in art school. Though he is outwardly male, Su feels that inside he is really female. The film revolves around Su’s halting monologues about his feelings about society, his upbringing and family, his identity crisis, and his art. The images shot on digital video are fluid, sensual, and for some reason their vibrant colors seem to run, and beautifully. Su’s speaking voice and his singing are addictive.
[Director’s Statement] I still remember his silence, his isolated behavior when we were together in art school. We used to go together to music concerts and art exhibitions but it was always a silent journey. After graduating we went to different jobs: I got a job in design for IT products and he became a painter with a different eye perception. But this whole experience was not enough for me to insinuate his presence with me from the last eight years.
I started meeting Su again in June 2000, most of the time we talked about general things, about life and how I feel about him; it was like a war for me to make out what he is.
One day, while having a cup of coffee in the capital’s restaurant, I asked Su if I could make a film about him. It was like a light joke for him in the air and the same for me, to think about my friend in the frame of film. It was a challenge to express such complicated feelings, which were a part of our lives.
In the process of meetings, I came to know lots of other things about him and his surroundings. It was a very friendly movement in comparison to the silence of the past four years. In the last phase of my meetings, I got a Hi8 camera, and started documenting the style, look and feel of the film. The style I conceived was very appropriate for the subject and very real. My objective was to give the look and feel of a daily life in “the way we see each other.”
Neeraj Bhasin
Studied Mass Communication in Direction and Scriptwriting from Sri Aurobindo Institute of Mass Communications. Has worked as associate director for a tele-film project on AIDS, as the graphic artist for a TV game show for kids, and as art director and executive producer for a TVI network talkshow. He is presently working for the creative unit of a software development company as an associate consultant. He is now cultivating new concepts for film, which he hopes to bestow with introspection. He wants to give meaningful addition to cinema, where rational thought process and research is involved. |