City-based director's film goes to Swiss fest

KOLKATA: City-based debutant director Lubdhak Chatterjee's 'Whispers of Fire and Water" (WFW), tracing the journey of an audio installation artist in one of the largest coal mining regions of eastern India, has been selected in the Concorso Cineasti del presente section of Switzerland's Locarno Film Festival. The film has also been nominated for the Green Pardo award of Locarno.The Green Pardo celebrates films highlighting values related to sustainability, ecology and interspecies relationships.
In 1988, a documentary titled "The Sacrifice of Babulal Bhuiya" by debutant Bengali director Manjira Dutta had created ripples by her hard-hitting introspection on the lives of coal dust collectors in Mailagora. Thirty-five years later, Chatterjee's Hindi, Bengali and English-language film goes back to another coal mine - this time in Jharia - to explore among other issues the direct consequences on lives of people living in a coal belt by the energy policies.
Lubdhak Chatterjee
Chatterjee’s short film “Aahuti” was screened at the perspectives category of the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2020. The Locarno selection in the competitive section for his debut feature is a new feather on his cap. This 83-minute-long film stars Sagnik Mukherjee, Amit Saha, Saikat Chatterjee, Rohini Chatterjee and Deepak Halder. The film’s sound design and mixing have been done by Sougata Banerjee. Arjun Gourisaria and Lubdhak Chatterjee have edited the film. Director Bauddhayan Mukherji, who co-produced WFW along with Shaji Mathew, Aruna Mathew, Monalisa Mukherji, said this film “is not the outcome of a studio system”. “It does not have stars but actors. It has a debutant director, a debutant cinematographer (Kenneth Cyrus) and a debutant music director (Rohen Bose). If a film like this makes it to Locarno and gets nominated for the Green Pardo, it augurs well for the entire indie community. It helps all of us to dream big and tell stories that matter to us,” Mukherji pointed out.
Over the last six years, Chatterjee got the opportunity to work with communities in rural and tribal areas, as well as in the mining belts. His experiences took him closer to the wider socio-political issues which “define life out there”. “They also questioned my presence and role as an art practitioner as well as a human being. These very questions formed the genesis of this film. Simultaneously the scope of sound has been a constant fascination even in my earlier works which became the primary vehicle of exploration in this film as well,” Chatterjee said.