FTII student's film makes it to fest

PUNE: Dreams are like sunbeams piercing a dark room, which you can receive on your palm but not clench with your fist. A little boy has one such dream of seeing God.
This forms the theme for a Film and Television Institute of India student film, Darshan (Divine Sight), which has been selected for screening at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), scheduled to open in New Delhi on Thursday.
Darshan, along with a couple of other FTII films, will be on show along with the works of masters like Buddhadev Dasgupta at IFFI 2003, in the prestigious Indian Panorama section.
Directed by second-year student Umesh Kulkarni, the Marathi short film is the regional language film to make it to the section, which is all the more special considering few Marathi films have made it to the Indian Panorama in recent years.
To be screened at the Siri Fort auditorium in New Delhi at 2.30 pm on October 15 and 18, the film stars seasoned actresses like Aditi Kulkarni and Jyoti Subhash, besides Madan Deodhar, the large-eyed lad who seeks the Darshan.
That it''s a second-year student film (not a diploma film), is a greater triumph because the students have to make these films inside a studio — testing the skills of cameraman and co-art director Manoj Lobo to the utmost.
In Darshan, the challenge was greater because the backdrop was a large, traditional rural home, which had to be brought alive artificially inside a studio. While Biju V.S. (editing) and Lobo are students like Umesh, old pros Shreerang Umrani (music) and Satee Boralia (dialogue) have assisted the effort.
Will the success of the film bring greater Darshans to Umesh and Marathi cinema?