In a not-so-faraway village, people use discarded reels of 35-mm film to make loud toys such as rattlers, whistles and whirligigs. Every day several hundred toys are crafted, and for each of these hundred toys they splice, slit and rip filmstrips. As they follow this routine with uninterrupted monotony, a few narratives leak out from the shredded analogues of film and infuse the place with phantasmagoria.
Distance is a short film about a far away village set amidst a growing metropolis where workers narrate stories of love and longing.
PRESENCE is the second film produced under the Behind the Tin Sheets project. The film follows ghost stories from faraway as narrated by workers against a changing metropolis. Long days and nights spent within the bellies of the rising structural beasts that rapidly transform the city of Bangalore bring on visions of ghosts that speak of the construction workers’ memories, longings and fears, in this haunting meditation on the migrant experience.
