Mumbai: Miss Lovely director Ashim Ahluwalia's next project, a 16mm short film titled Events In A Cloud Chamber, will have its world premiere at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival.
For the film, Ahluwalia has collaborated with 89-year-old legendary Indian artist, Akbar Padamsee to remake the experimental film he had made in 1969. Its print is now lost. The 20-minutes short film will be shown in Venice Classic. The festival takes place in Venice August 31 to September 10. Padamsee, one of the pioneers in Modern Indian painting along with Raza, Souza and MF Hussain, made the 16mm film Events In A Cloud Chamber in 1969.
Ahluwalia has produced the film via his company Future East, in association with the art gallery, Jhaveri Contemporary, where the film will be screened in November, 2016.
"When I met Akbar Padamsee, he was 87 years old. I knew he was one of the pioneers of Indian modernist painting but I had no idea that he had made two forgotten experimental films.
"Akbar was really keen to collaborate on something cinematic because he knew I was interested in that sort of thing. I really wasn't sure what we could do together until he just happened to tell me about this second film - Events in a Cloud Chamber," Ahluwalia said in a statement.
The director said the film's print was lost during an art expo in Delhi in the '70s. There was no negative.
Ahluwalia, who believes had the film survived, it could have been the start of a different kind of cinema in India, says he wanted Padamsee to remember whatever he could as they attempted to make it again.
"He couldn't completely remember how exactly the film was made, and that was what made the process so fascinating and collaborative for me. "I find this stuff more inspiring, more future-looking than anything going on today in the art or film world. It's like ghost stories - so many missing links, mysterious artworks, lost films. But I'm not trying to be nostalgic, just trying to look to the past to find inspiration because there
were so many directions started and never finished," he said.
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