Odia documentary on puppeteers to be screened at Italy film fest

BHUBANESWAR: An Odia documentary on the lives and times of the puppeteers of Odisha directed and edited by national award-winning filmmaker, Lipika Singh Darai, has been selected to be screened at the 39th edition of the Asolo Art Film Festival, Italy on Monday.
The film, called Backstage, has been selected in the feature film competition category of the section called Film on Art.
The 85-minute film has documented four forms of puppetry including glove, string, rod and shadow, which are now being performed by the last generation of artists in Odisha. The folk art form, which is as vulnerable as its performers, who mostly belong to the lower strata of society, is experiencing a silent death.
“One evening after watching a cultural event on dying art forms, I came to know from a senior journalist that in my state of Odisha there is an old puppeteer with a few hundred puppets and that there would be no one after him to carry forward his legacy. The curiosity to meet the puppeteer was the beginning of a journey in which the idea of the film germinated,” Lipika said.