BRIDGE at Los Angeles: Hollywood Houses with Kripal Kalita, writes Mrinmoy Bhuyan

May 27: The 51^st International Film Festival of India (IFFI) award winning Assamese movie Bridge was screened at 19^th Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) on 21 May last. After the IFFI tag won at Panaji, Goa in January last, the film, based on the burning problem of Flood in Assam, directed by Kripal Kalita has been being invited to number of International Festivals including the Imagine International Film Festival XX Education at Madrid, Spain, the Camerron International Film Festival in Buea city, the Golden Jury International Film Festival and Trissur International Film Festival. But the Los Angeles Festival remains a remarkable milestone for Bridge, and hence for Kripal Kalita as well, for the reason it has drawn rare attention from at least three big Production Houses from Hollywood.

The giants like Columbia Pictures, Picturestart and Endeavor Content were hurry to interact with Kripal Kalita through Webinar immediately after seeing the movie at the LA festival. During the interactions, Lakshmi Ayenger of Columbia Pictures (a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group) hailed the film as an entertaining Art Work with essential elemental human touch that could keep a full house spellbound for the entire run with heartbreaking realities caused by a devastating river. Going beyond Bridge, Lucy Putnam of Picturestart,  was eager to know more about the flood problem in this part of India- whether it’s due to global warming or natural phenomena over the years.

She was also seen interested in the recent death of 18 elephants, reportedly due to electrocution by Lightning, in Assam. Dylan Kelly, representing Endeavor Content, said, ‘It’s unbelievable, the scale flood havoc can reach such a magnitude to upturn not only the geography of land and paddy fields, but the socio-economic demography of vast rural areas also’. She lamented not seeing too many such films on natural calamities from the South Asian countries.

‘That’s how an Art Piece is created’, Columbia commented on the film, praising the Assamese director. They were excited to know that neither animation nor any computer ape, and not even voice dubbing in studio was used in the film Bridge. The film is scheduled to be released in public halls, if the pandemic allows, in September next.

Bridge won the Special Mention Award in the 51^st IFFI at Goa in January last. Earlier to this, two other Assamese films- Adarya and The Village Rock Star begged prizes in the Panorama, but Bridge is the first Assamese film to achieve this feat in International category in an IFFI. After the screening show in the festival at Goa, John Mathew Matthan, the legendary Bollywood director, famous particularly for his popular movie ‘Sarfarosh’ in 1999,  one of the IFFI Juries this year, was overwhelmed to comment, ‘Bridge is the best’. The words from the Hollywood Production Houses from LA in virtual meet were just from where John Mathew had left his comment at Goa. Winning a prize in a competitive festival is one thing, but when you force bind an authority to underline your work, it could be a breakthrough.

Columbia Pictures wanted to know from Kripal Kalita, how did he design for such production that eventually nominated for series of International awards ? ‘I had a vision to highlight the problems of floods in my land, and had a story of my own to depict it’, Kalita replied. ‘I was just going sincerely with my limited resources. My full team, including the actors and technical persons were all fresher. Everyone was doing their jobs for the first time in their career. I never thought, even today, whether my money will be back or not,’ he elaborated.

Meanwhile, Kripal Kalita is currently busy in giving the final touch to a documentary film on Elephant in Assam. Hollywood giants were seen looking forward for his coming documentary on animal protection . Kripal Kalita  also let the media know about his next project of making a film in English on ‘Siu-Ka-Pha’, the first Ahom King of Assam.