#HGAcademy: Learn The Art Of Independent Filmmaking With Director Aditya Kripalani

#HGAcademy:

Many would say that the apogee of storytelling can only be reached through visual expression. Nothing compares to the nuances that can be drawn with a mere second’s worth of movement, and films, that way, are the ultimate dream for any visual storyteller. The best of films, unlike what could be conventionally believed in a country like India does not only come from grand banners or big celebrities.

Alfred Hitchcock once said, “In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call ‘photographs of people talking.’ When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in a cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.”And that’s exactly what good cinema is. The good news is that one doesn’t need to have a big banner or a supremely high budget to make good cinema, and independent cinema is a big example of the same. India has some of the world’s leading independent filmmakers who have, over the years, produced some of the world’s finest films.

Our HG Academy mentor of the day, Mr Aditya Kripalani, is one such filmmaker who has partnered with Homegrown to tell us about the art of filmmaking.

At a time when our physical spaces are confined and movement is stifled, the only constant in our lives is our own creativity. For a while, we, at Homegrown have been toying with the idea of evolving our platform into a space that inspires generations to believe that their career paths are not limited to those shaped by our society and that there is a world out there that where creative industries are thriving. Our sole motivation behind this attempt is to shift the needle in the Indian creative industries. This is where the idea of HG Academy comes to fruition.

Filmmaker and Screen Writer Aditya Kripalani was trained at the Film and Television Institute of India. His work in the independent filmmaking space is pioneering and through his films Tikli and Laxmi Bomb and Tottaa Pataaka Item Maal.

After working as a script consultant for a while, he took the plunge as a director with his first film Tikli and Laxmi Bomb which was based on his bestselling novel of the same name. He is also the producer, writer, and co-music director of this film. His second film titled Tottaa Pataaka Item Maal opened at the Garden State Film Festival in 2018 followed by the Kala Ghoda Film Festival and the UK Asian Film Festival. It’s also now available on Netflix worldwide. Aditya’s third film, titled Devi Aur Hero won the prestigious NETPAC Award for Best Film at the 25th Kolkata International Film Festival in November 2019. He has also worked as a writer and Creative Director in advertising with agencies such as Lintas, JWT Singapore, Leo Burnett, Kuala Lumpur, and McCann Singapore. His novels, songs, ads, and films, all have a very clear ambition of shaping the world into a certain kind of place. They are rife with attempts at challenging social issues, particularly gender and patriarchy.

Kripalani says that with every movie, his idea of feminism keeps evolving and while initially, to him, feminism was only about women, he has recently started thinking about how the same systems affect men and what would a gender-equal world look like.

The sessions at HG Academy will see digital festivals, skill-building sessions, new personal & professional strategies and similar efforts towards connecting you to the world of creators to learn and be inspired. The aim is to deep-dive into the creative process, new ways of learning, re-imagination of old ways and experience and learn more. As we spend our days inside our homes and within ourselves, HG Academy with its commune of creative thought leaders and pioneers will teach you the basics that you might not get access to elsewhere. We hope for it to evolve into a culture of creation, collaboration, discovery through an exchange of thoughts & ideas.

The following are Kripalani’s resource recommendations if you want to learn more about independent filmmaking:

Films:

Sand Storm by Elite Xexer (2016)

I, Daniel Blake (2016) and Sorry, We Missed You (2019) by Ken Loach

What Will People Say (2017) by Iram Haque

Pune 52 (2013) by Nikhil Mahajan

And Breathe Normally (2018) by Ísold Uggadóttir

Amour (2013) by Michael Haneke

Documentaries:

Honeyland
(2019) - Tamara Kotevska

For Sama (2019) - Waad al-Kataeb and Edwards Watts

Midnight Family (2019) - Luke Lorentzen