Route map of Rima Das' success story as filmmaker

By our staff reporter

GUWAHATI, Sept 3: Nothing is impossible if one keeps confidence in his/her own work. One should always take an example of Author Preeti Shenoy’s book Life Is What You Make It.   Every path has failure but the most important thing one needs to learn is to grow up successfully between failures. Independent filmmaker Rima Das’ claim to fame is her back-to-back success in two films directed by her.

A daughter of Assam Das, who was pursuing her higher studies from Pune University in Sociology and completed her NET examition but was much interested to embark in the path of feature filmmaking in 2016, had her first Assamese feature film Antardrishti’ (Man with the Binoculars). Later in the same year, she was successful to show her talent in the intertiol platform with the screening of her first film at Cannes Film Festival in France, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival at Estonia and Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.

Rima built in non-professiol actors for her movie, mostly children, from her village. Shooting of the film was done with Canon 5D DSLR camera which was bought back in 2011. After that, she began her journey towards being an independent filmmaker.

Talking to The Sentinel, Rima Das said: “The experience was totally different. I’m lost for words to express my happiness. I made the film the way I love to see it. As a woman it was very difficult at some point, but the support from my family, friends and my crew gave me a positive energy. Whatever I’m today is everyone’s blessings and support. Their support boosted by confidence level. I worked with a small enthusiastic team. The sound and music was done beautifully by Amrit Pritam and Anurag Saikia. The film was edited by Suresh Pai. Ratjit Roy has done cinematography. Bishnu Kharghoriya has done the perfect role. Apart from him, yan Nirban Barua, Shashank Sameer, Lakhya Sharma and a few others have acted in the film.”

 “My journey started with the short film ‘Pratha’ which was done by me in 2009 and got selected for Chicago short film festival. After this my confidence level grew up and I got the positive energy to work more in future for our industry,” Das said.

Das has also completed her second film Village Rockstars. The story is about a 10-year-old girl, Dhunu, the character, who dreams of buying her own guitar and wants to form a band, the Rockstars, with a cluster of local boys from her village. “This is my very own heart touching film which almost turned my life in a different path. I shot with my own local kids in the village Kalardiya, the kids who are very close to me. It took three years to complete my shooting. During that period my parents, the kids who became very close to me gave me full support to complete this film,” she said.

Earlier, Rima has also successfully achieved two intertiol awards for her films.

Village Rockstars is also selected for one of the largest film festivals in the world, Toronto Intertiol Film Festival this year. This is the first film from NE which is selected for this festival. It is also selected for San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain which will start from September 22 this year. There are more such film festivals.

Another film of Rima, Antardrishti’ (Man with the Binoculars) will be screened on September 17 at Brahmaputra Film Festival in the city.