Meaning Making Machines
The other day, I showed my 105 minutes Tulu film SUDDHA to a few friends in Mumbai. Among the viewers was Srinivas Jokatte, a Mumbai based Kannada short story writer and journalist at ‘Karnataka Malla’, a Mumbai Kannada newspaper. After seeing the film one of his reaction was that it is an “Art Film” and some of the subtleties that such ‘Art Films’ would posses might not work with ordinary filmgoers. He gave examples of some ‘Art Films’ that had come from Bangalore at the height of the New Wave Movement a few decades back. ‘People did not understand what the filmmakers were trying to say’ he lamented. He added quickly, ‘There is no such communication issues with your film, but will the layman get the meaning of, for example, the general village shots that you have inserted between various sequences?’ In SUDDHA, as an editing pattern, there are some general village shots that I had inserted in between some key sequences. These are shots showing villagers going about in their daily routi...