In a short span of 15 to 20 minutes, my project, which was a short-fiction film, explores the concept that “One man’s dream is another man’s reality.” It demonstrates what happens to a man faced with the horror of his own dream.
The story revolves around a 35 year old man, Nachiketa, who realizes that the dream that had been haunting him for quite some time, might just take his life one day. Panic-stricken, he tries his level best to avoid this dream, but his futile efforts give way to life’s own cruel way of creeping in. Tired and dejected of running, Nachiketa mentally prepares himself to face his fatal dream one last time.
For this film, I followed the true Beckettian structure by often repeating an action or a sequence in each act, and while doing so, re-defining the context and meaning of the act at each stage.
Hence, the film is told in three visually repetitive acts where the repetition of dialogues changes the context and the meaning of each act and takes it to the next level. Each act starts with one character’s real life and ends in a dream sequence. The camera comes closer to the character as and when reality transforms into dream. My objectives underlying such a treatment were a structural experiment of this kind and the placement of an ancient yet relevant ‘text’ in a current, urban milieu.
My diploma project, like all films, started with the search for an idea. There were many ideas that sprang up at the ideation stage. The challenge was to come up with something interesting, short, and feasible. The project gave me a better understanding of the areas where I had made mistakes during the entire process, but I guess, all’s well that ends well.
