Film Fare Awards has introduced a new category of awards – Digital Short Film Awards 2017 – with an aim to support and encourage young film makers in India.

These films are to be judged by six esteemed jury from the film industry Gauri Shinde, Karan Johar, Meghna Gulzar, Vidya Balan, Zoya Akhtar and Kabir Khan. In their first year of awards itself they received 1300 entries from budding film makers from across the country. Out of these 1300 films, 30 odd films were shortlisted to be judged by the jury.

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‘Rendezvous’, a Marathi short film directed by Omkar Nilange has been shortlisted among these top 30 for the Film Fare Awards!!! Omkar who has also written the screenplay and dialogues for the movie is now an independent filmmaker and made this film as his Diploma project with Whistling Woods International. He fondly remembers his initial days on this film when he began with the story of ‘To majhi vaat pahat asel’ by an eminent Marathi writer Vasant Purushottam Kale (popularly known as Va. Pu. Kale or Va. Pu.). Omkar started working on the film early this year in January 2016.

“It took us 2 months to actually get an appropriate location for the film! We tried several places but just could not get the perfect setting. The screenplay was first written with Gateway of India in its backdrop but it was absolutely not feasible to practically get that location. So we finally shot at one of the fishing villages in Madh Island, Mumbai.”

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Even getting the budget sanctioned was not an easy task for Omkar and his team. Since this film was to be shot in water, it required special cameras and equipment. After tremendous amount of working and reworking of their expenses they came down to a number that was still much above the highest budget ever pitched in Whistling Woods till date. “I actually acted out the whole script in front of them on the day of the final verdict on the budget and finally both Anuradha Ma’am and Rahul Sir gave a go ahead. I am deeply grateful to them for having faith in me.”
They faced several obstacles in the making of this film. The shooting was scheduled for 4 days only.

“We could only shoot when there was high tide. In low tide the water recedes almost upto 1.5 km and the boat cannot be taken that far. So we used to do all the shooting during 7am to 11 am in the morning. Even though we were well planned and had chalked out our schedule carefully we faced issues that we could not have predicted. On the first day as the tide changed and water receded the boat got stuck by a rock and just would not move. As hard as we tried it did not budge and the owner of the boat said you will have to wait until tomorrow morning’s high tide to move the boat. So we had to do a lot of contingency change of plans! On another day due to new moon the high tide was so strong that we all became sick during the shooting. The boat swayed dangerously so much so that Ketan, one of our leading actors, felt the water touch his cheek when the boat tilted on one side.”

“Despite all these difficulties all my crew members really put in their heart and soul into the making of this film. Some fell sick, some were starved at times and some worked all through several nights to make this film happen. I am really amazed by the dedication shown by everyone and this film is the product of our team work.”

The biggest motivation for Omkar was the presence of actor Sunil Barve in the lead role. The very fact that an actor like Sunil Barve said yes to act in his film kept him motivated and inspired to make it happen and he was absolutely humbeled by the sincerity and dedication shown by him. “He would always be there on time for the shooting and help me out in all ways possible during the shoot. Mr. Sunil Barve is an amazing man to work with and a fantastic actor!”

Image source : indiatimes.com

‘Rendezvous’ is now competing among the top 30 short films shortlisted for the Jio Film Fare Short Film Awards 2017. Proud to have made a miniscule contribution by writing the subtitles for this film! You can watch the film here and vote for it:
http://www.filmfare.com/awards/short-films-2017/finalists/rendezvous/1278

Story: Va. Pu. Kale

Screenplay, Dialogues, Direction: Omkar Nilange

Producer: Param Trivedi

Actors: Sunil Barve, Ketan Sunil Pawar

Cinematography: Darshit Gupta

Sound: Dhruv Parekh

Music: Devendra Bhome

Student Production HOD: Anuradha Bhatia

Production Head of film: Santosh Kadam

Vice President and CTO at Whistling Woods: Rahul Puri

Feature image source : entertainmentbng.com

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• FlimFare2017