The California premiere marks the commencement of the Oscar-qualifying run for Prataya Saha’s period short film Shonar Khacha - The Golden Cage. The cast of the movie comprises actors Anshulika Kapoor, Deboprasad Haldar and Sounak Sen Barat who have breathed life into characters that are deeply intertwined with Kolkata’s heritage. Sanjeev T has lent his musical brilliance to the film, with Anindita Banerjee Roy adding her distinctive voice to the film as a voice-over artiste. “Though the team is small, everybody is exceptionally talented,” says Saha. We spoke to him to learn more about the film.
Tell us about Shonar Khacha.
Shonar Khacha is my first Bengali project. It’s a film that talks about how heritage buildings across Kolkata and India are getting destroyed and obliterated at an alarming rate. And this is something that I have noticed very closely growing up during the 90’s. The film is set in 1989, and is about three people, two brothers and the elder brother’s wife, in an erstwhile zamindari family who are trying to sell off their property at a cheap rate because they don’t have any food on their table. On a macro level, this talks of what the situation was like for many, in those days. The economy was different and even the furniture from these houses, if sold to an antique dealer, would bring them a few thousand. You get to see a plethora of buildings across Kolkata in a dilapidated state. Even the owner of the house that we shot in said that this was her story too!
Another sub-context in this was that even if we look away from the real estate point of view, these houses are a hotbed of cultures, traditions, and history. Imagine how much we are losing in terms of that with the demolition of these houses. So, through this film I wanted to bring forth our perspective on heritage and how we maintain them.
How much time did it take to make the film?
To make this 11-minute short film, it took almost 2-2.5 months of pre-production, and the entire post-production took almost 6-6.5 months. We designed the sound of the film over four months and worked on the colour scale of the film which we wanted to look exactly the way it looked back in the 1980s. I wanted the film to look in such a way that it feels like people have gone back in time.
Tell us about your upcoming projects.
This will be one of my last shorts, and I will move on to make features. I have already written a series. I
have plans for a Bengali feature film that is set in Kolkata in 1994, a story about two beautiful women
in their 40s. I have also written an anthology consisting of five chapters, and each chapter is based in
an Indian city.