G5A-NYIFF Film Festival Reviews: Daaravtha (Marathi for Threshold)

Here’s one more winner screened at ongoing the G5A-NYIFF Film Festival: Best Debut Film of a Director at the 63rd National Film Awards in the Non Feature Film category. It’s a 30-minute short fiction, a coming of age and discovering homosexuality parallelism, that pieces together real-life experiences of several gay men into a sensitive collage. If it does not make you sit up and applaud, while impressing you with its exquisite narrative tapestry, the fault lies partly with the hype,  partly with the stock nature montage beginning and the claptrap ending.

On the brink of adolescence, a young boy struggles between his own desires and the confines of a strict patriarchal society in rural Maharashtra. He is fascinated by nature, loves dance, mehndi (henna) and jewellery. Mesmerised by the beautiful costumes and spell-binding dancing in his school’s play kathak based play on Vishnu-Mohini, he is delighted when he is offered the female lead role, especially since this is his chance to finally get closer to the older boy, the main actor, on whom he’s been harbouring a secret crush.

Shot all over Gondia district in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, he where he experienced intense homophobic scrutiny. Bombarde has captured the locales and society as only a native can.

After working with Zee TV for three years, he shifted to Zee Studios, where he heads digital media promotions and works as an executive producer. Among other projects, he has served as executive producer on the raved Marathi films Killa, Fandry and Elizabeth Ekadashi. Nishant has recently worked as an actor and director’s associate on Dushyantapriya, a queer adaptation of Kalidasa’s Shakuntalam. In the original, Dushyant is the King who falls for the forest belle, Shakuntala. He has done the costumes too, as he explained to this writer in Q&A, “The designer ditched us last minute. Maybe money was the issue (the film has cost only Rs. 5 lakh/approx. USD7,500 to make). However, since I believe costumes are a part of the character’s personality, I did not face much difficulty.

Bombarde recreates the 90s era with the help of music and radio broadcasts, and insists that in any story about the 1990s, Sreedevi has to be there (you have the ‘Mere haathon men’ clip from Chandni). With the best of intentions, de incorporates a complex kathak ballet about a little known story of Hindu mythology, involving Vishnu and Mohini. Imaginatively and inventively choreographed, it needs background awareness to comprehend. A student of Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC), Bombarde retained the services of Anadi Atahaley, who studied a few kms away, at the Film and Television Institute of India. Daaravtha took much longer than a 30 min film should have taken, to edit, and there were some areas of conflict between director and editor, the two confessed at the Q&A. Not all the variation in pace are convincing, yet the editing is above par.

Two main actors really stand out: Nandita Patkar (Elizabeth Ekadashi) as the mother and Nishant Bhavsar, selected after a disappointing audition, as the 12 year-old boy. They are well supported by Sanjay Purkar, Anurag Worlikar, Vidushri Ruchi Sharma and Sumedha Rangari. Special mention needs to be made of Shantanu Herlekar’s musical score.

This day, July 05, attracted a sparse audience, and understandably so. Four films, the longest of which is 30 minutes, in Marathi, and about the first realisation of by a boy of his homosexuality, are not popular fare. By contrast, the Balck Box was almost full when Kadambari (a biographical episode from the life of RabindranathTagore/Bengali/Konkona SenSharma) was shown, a couple of days later.

Rating: ***

Priyanka Charan conducted the Q&A.

Trailer: https://www.facebook.com/Daaravtha/videos/vb.791824640946461/826808447448080/?type=2&theater

Nishant Roy Bombarde, talking about Daaravtha at Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA), where it was premièred.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TECA2MY5yCw

On Tuesday, 12^th July, at the G5A-NYIFF, you can see

The Threshold (Winner – Best Actor and Best Actress, at NYIFF)

(Not to be confused with the Marathi short, Daaravtha, screened earlier at this festival, and reviewed above. Daaravtha, in Marathi, is also translated as The Threshold)

Director – Pushan Kriplani

Cast – Neena Gupta, Rajit Kapur

Hindi | 87 mins

A North Indian couple, in their early 60s, at their mountain retreat. Their son has just gotten married, a reception has ended and all the guests have left. She chooses this moment to tell her husband that she is leaving. What follows is an endless day: the avalanche of this long-gathering decision and what it means to a decades-long relationship. Fragments of conversations, silence and chaos, as nostalgia mingles with menace and tenderness with cruelty. What will they succeed in rescuing against the landslide of memory and emotion?

 *Post Screening Q&A with actor Neena Gupta and Producer Akshat Shah.