The Bare essentials
The Hindu : y>Prakash Bare’s childhood obsession with film takes shape as his film is set to be screened at the International Film Festival of Kerala, writes VIKHAR AHMED SAYEED
When Prakash Bare was a little boy growing up in the coastal city of Kannur in northern Kerala, one of his favourite passtimes was to collect film strips that would be sliced between various 35 mm reels in his father’s cinema. Over a two or three week period, apart from dedicatedly watching the Malayalam and Tamil films that were screened, Bare would try to stitch together his own little film from the strips that were sliced away. “I think I was like that kid in the film ‘Cinema Paradiso’,” says the soft-spoken Bare, with a nostalgic smile that can only accompany a childhood memory.
Bare’s reference is to the 1988 Italian film in which the protagonist’s (named Salvatore) tryst with the magic of films starts at a young age in the projectionist’s room at a local movie theatre. The similarity between Bare and Salvatore does not end there. Both end up making films — of course in Bare’s case there was a longish break before he realised his dream but the wait has been worth it as his first film has been selected in the ‘Competition’ section of the prestigious International Film Festival of Kerala that will be held next month.
“Sufi Paranja Katha” (What the Sufi Said), a Malayalam film, is his debut venture (he has produced and starred in it). The film explores the syncretic heritage of the Malabar region in Kerala by telling the tale of a shrine and how it came to be. A period film, set more than a 100 years ago, the “Sufi…” is an immersive experience where the viewer will sink into a historical Kerala and be taken on a nuanced journey into the troubled realms of faith, love and…More
