Ashish Chadha's feature film Nirakar Chayya, or Shadows Formless, won the Best Director & Best Actress Award at the 8th Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival held in New York between 5-9th November.
See the Press Release.
Nirakar Chayya won the two awards in a festival which had films like– Deepa Mehta's "Heaven and Earth", Shyam Benegal's "Bose", Ketan Mehta's "Rang Rasiya", Adoor Gopal Krishnan's "Four Women" and others. The jury of the film festival consisted of film scholars, curator from Museum of Modern Art, local film critics, film festival directors and filmmakers from New York.
Nirakar Chhaya, which was made at a less than shoestring budget of less than Rs. 20 lakhs, was able to win the top prizes competing with films, which had a budget of 100 times more. The production of the film started in 2003 and it took 4 years to finish the film. The film was made from the money saved by Ashish Avikunthak from his scholarship money that he got as a Phd student at Stanford University.
The film saw its world premiere at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. It has also been shown at the International Film Festival Innsbruck, Austria 2008 and at Singapore International Film Festival 2008.
But even after these awards the film will never see a theatrical release in India. In July, 2008, the Censor Board, Kolkata has decided to deny censor certificate to the film and demanded one cut in the film. This is a three-minute sequence of chickens been hacked in a market place. This is a metaphoric pivot of the film, and depicts something that happens every day, in every market in the country – butchery of chicken for consumption.
Ashish Avikunthak has been the core member of the Vikalp, a network of filmmakers who have taken an ideological stance against censorship in India. He has therefore decided not to cut the sequence that the censor board has demanded. This means that the film will never been shown in India, in cinema screens, satellite television or in DVDs/VCDs - a decision that Avikunthak has taken as an ideological move to resist the hegemony of state censorship in India.
See more of Ashish's work at his website.
