The Value Of Life: Upamanyu Bhattacharyya & Kalp Sanghvi On Their Short "Wade"
Co-directors Upamanyu Bhattacharyya & Kalp Sanghvi are animators, illustrators, comic book artists, filmmakers, and co-founders of Ghost Animation, which is based in Kolkata, India. Their first project, Wade, addresses the importance of climate change by focusing on the dangerous sea rising levels in India. This stunning animation screened online as part of Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June and Palm Springs International Shortfest.
In an imagined future where Kolkata is rendered unlivable by rising sea level, things take a dark turn when a family of climate change refugees are ambushed by a tiger in the flooded streets.
Wade has currently applied to over 60 festivals and its selections so far include Palm Springs International Short Fest, Brooklyn Film Festival (Best Film, Audience Award), ITFS Stuttgart, Krakow Film Festival, Animayo Film Festival (Best Art Direction) and OFF Odense International Film Festival. We had the opportunity to chat with Upamanyu and Kalp about Wade and its aesthetic, the effects of global warming, and much much more!
How did the two of you first meet and come to collaborate on this project?
Both of us were students at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. We began working together in 2012, initially on some college promos, followed by freelance jobs and a stretch of working together on projects in India's film capital, Mumbai. By winter 2015, we decided that we needed to take it easy, already, and focus our newfound skills on making a film. We managed to convince some excellent students still studying at NID to come over to Kolkata and work on the still hypothetical film in the summer of 2016.
How did the concept for Wade originate?
Since the plan to go to Kolkata had solidified, it also began to figure that it would be interesting to base the still unformed film in the city. While trying to imagine what this film could be, we read an article about an island called Ghoramara in The Sundarbans Delta, which is actively sinking because of climate change, leaving its residents with nowhere to go. This was probably the first time we saw the links between climate change and mass migration. The Sundarbans is just to the south of Kolkata. If the swelling sea could obliterate the Sundarbans, surely it would reach Kolkata in a blip. What would a flooded Kolkata actually look like? What’s more, where would the people of the Sundarbans go? Would the people of Kolkata welcome them, understand them? When the flooding begins, how many people would stay in Kolkata, and how many could or would leave? The questions dominoed into bigger, scarier questions, which we tried to address in the film.
The two of you did key animation on the project in addition to writing and directing the film. What was your collaboration process like through each phase of production?
Since production happened in fairly irregular fits and starts, as is probably common with a first film, we found ourselves splitting work based on our strengths and hiring help for what we couldn't handle ourselves. We both enjoy character animation a lot, so when we come up with a story moment, we have a fairly instantaneous idea of how to translate it into drawings. We had favorite characters who we'd love to get to perform and were actually quite sad when all their drawings were done.
I loved the style of the film. How did you find the film’s look? Was there anything specific that influenced its aesthetic?
A lot of the aesthetic comes from the art of Bengal itself. Wide eyes with tiny pupils are a common motif in local folk art, and it added to the perpetual look of nervousness our characters needed. We tried various stylistic approaches, some more graphic than others, but realized that we wanted real people to be an inspiration so that the characters end up being that much more believable. Over time, true details like damaged skin, scars, wet fur, collarbones, and even sweat became very important to us to add to the plausibility of the setting. Even though one needs to simplify detail to animate feasibly, we found ourselves putting in the extra time to bring these tiny things to life. For the city, too, realism was the key. It had to be an almost familiar setting, especially to the people from Kolkata, so that they could make the leap of imagination into truly coming to terms with the inevitable future of the city.
One of the things I loved about the short is how it balanced gentleness with brutality, hopefulness with despair. How did you nail down the film’s tone, and what were some of the difficulties you encountered?
We're so glad you found that balance! It's usually easy and tempting to make a gore fest, but that can be a bit much while saying very little. A core idea in the film was the value of life, which is why it became important that nature balance all the equations in the story. If something is taken, it has to be given back. Eventually, we're not nihilistic about our future. In all crises, there are moments of grace and selflessness too.
I really admire when a film tells a full story without any words. To me, it’s the purest and most artful form of cinema. What do you both like about telling stories in a predominately visual sense, and what were some of the storytelling obstacles you had to overcome without the aid of dialogue?
It's a very primal form of storytelling and especially as filmmakers just beginning to learn the craft, it's excellent practice. The only form of tension and release is the edit, which makes you acutely aware of the power of holding a shot until you cut. The biggest obstacle is probably the context. Most film viewers around the world are not familiar with Kolkata, so it's probably the easiest to start with big expositional paragraphs of text which would lay out the history and geography for you. While that doesn't count as dialogue, we did our best to make do without that and let the viewer piece together visual clues after being dropped into the middle of this story's universe. The characters are actively avoiding death by predator, so silence is probably their natural state of being (The Quiet Place?), and the lack of language/subtitles makes the story a touch more universal.
Global Warming is a very real and grave matter that unfortunately not everyone takes seriously. What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
We just hope that viewers take a moment to imagine their lives post climate change and think of the kind of people they'll be. Even during the pandemic, you have certain spectrums of behavior that you can see around the world. If civilization is to prevail over the impending climate disaster, we have to be kinder and more respectful of the lives of others.
Do you have any new projects in the works that you can share with us?
At Ghost Animation, we just completed three other short films besides Wade and are finishing four more this year. We're also working on a series, Rajbari: The Ancestral House, a fantasy family drama set in Kolkata, and a feature length film City of Threads, set in Ahmedabad in the 1960s.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!