An eight-art documentary will be made on the critically acclaimed Malayalam film Jallikattu, India’s official entry to the Oscars. The documentary is planned as a series on the making of Jallikattu.
Lijo Jose Pellissery directed Jallikattu, a film that’s loosely based on the short story Maoist written by S Hareesh, last year. Antony Varghese, Sabumon Abdusamad, Chemban Vinod and Santhy Balachandran played important roles in the film.
Filmmaker Vivian Radhakrishnan, who is directing the documentary on the film’s making, said in an interview to Cinema Express that it is an attempt to understand the efforts of every department of the film. A lot of material – around 40,000 clips – are available, he said.
Vivian added that the documentary will be a “documentation of the strenuous efforts behind cinema as a popular art form for which Jallikkattu served as a supreme example.”
Jallikkattu was scripted by S Hareesh in association with R Jayakumar. Girish Gangadharan did the cinematography and Deepu Joseph did the editing.
The film premiered at the 44th Toronto International Film Festival and was selected as an official entry at the BFI London Film Festival and Busan. Further, it was the only other south Indian film to be screened at the Montreal Festival Du Nouveau Cinema. The other one was the Tamil film Nilanadukkam, directed by debutant Balaji Vembu Chelli.
Watch: Trailer of Jallikattu
Jallikattu’s director Lijo Jose Pellisery is currently busy with the film Churuli. It is a Sci-Fi film directed and co-produced by Lijo Jose Pellissery and written by S Hareesh. The film features Chemban Vinod, Vinay Forrt and Joju George in the lead roles. Churuli is bankrolled by Lijo and Chemban under the banner of Movie Monastery and Chembosky Motion Pictures, in association with Jesto Varghese, O Thomas Panicker and Naushad Salahudin.
The director’s next film in the pipeline is titled Disco and he has roped in a bevy of stars to play important roles in the film. Reports are that Indrajith, Chemban Vinod and Mukesh will be playing pivotal roles in this flick which will mainly be shot in Las Vegas, US. Plans are on to sign up some more actors, particularly from the international film circuit, we hear. Reports are that the film’s backdrop will be the cultural event Burning Man that is held in Nevada, United States.
(Content provided by Digital Native)