Ask Delhi-based filmmaker Shalini Raghviah what the inspiration behind her award-winning short film, Watch The Stars For Me Tonight was, and she says that it was the charm of the Calcutta monsoon when she first moved there a few years ago. “I knew what it felt like to be out of sorts.Social media was out there, and chatting with friends when I was free helped me reconnect with people I had previously passed off as acquaintances,” she begins. Eventually, this became the plot line of the 17-minute-long short film.
Watch The Stars For Me Tonight (available on YouTube) has not only won the Best Direction Award at Samyak Short Fiction and Documentary Festival in Pune but has also travelled to several other festivals, including Kolkata International Film Festival and the Golden Bridge Festival, Moscow. It tells the story of Manasvi, a 30-something wife, mother of two, and out-of-work architect, who is lonely after moving to a new city. To fill in her days, she spends time on social media, eventually reconnecting with an old friend Aditya, a graphic designer — forming a meaningful and mutually fulfilling friendship with him. But it was important to Shalini that there was no judgement passed on her protagonist, Manasvi played by Ramanjit Kaur. “It’s about human warmth and a connection that is possible only with extreme respect between the two characters, among other things. How they retain their balance under the circumstances is the crux of the story. I wanted to tell it from a mature woman’s perspective,” she adds.
Shalini, who lived in Chennai for over 10 years, studying Physics at WCC and ballet at the Russian Culture Centre, set up Firebird Media, a freelance consultancy firm that provides custom-made communications solutions to development sector organisations, in 2008. The media house, which dabbles with films, articles and other research tools, is headquartered in Bangalore, but their projects, Shalini claims, could be based out of anywhere in India — from the tribal pockets of Chhattisgarh to a community radio station in the mountains of Himachal.
Currently, she is working on an independent documentary, entitled Thread of Life, the journey of three women and their work with Lucknow chikankari, a 400-year-old traditional embroidery — a project she is currently crowdsourcing funds for.
Watch the short film here: