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My film is titled “Pollena Kathe” which means Polle’s story. It is an attempt to weave together plots, characters, imagery, sound, space and magic in order to resonate the spirit of Tulu folktales. The film recreates the magical experience of listening to an oral folktale using recurring plot motifs that are specific to the oral tradition of Tulunadu. All these are woven into a tapestry in the dialogues between the two central characters –Polle, a simpleton who believes that folktales are real and Batru who is the village priest in need of wealth.
I felt a responsibility to my roots. Tulu is my mother tongue and the film is related to the unique identity of the Tulu land. I wanted to document my native imagery. The concept ideas where inspired by Tulu Folktales from A K Ramanujam’s ‘101 Indian Folktales’ and ‘The Flowering Tree’ and publications from the Tulu Sahitya Academy.
The research for this film was enjoyable. I learned of commonalities across folktales – pragmatic wisdom, humor, the freedom embedded in them through use of fantasy such as magic, boons, curses, angels, rhymes and abstraction. Characters are binary opposites, either good or bad. Either a story begins with poverty and ends in prosperity or the other way round with a lesson to the antagonist.
My interest in Tulu folklore had been shaped by my grandmother’s stories. The rich oral tradition of story-telling by grandmothers has been replaced by popular media. It is my aspiration that my film contributes in some meaningful way to the revival of oral story-telling. |