Medicos take up, complete challenge of making film in 50 hours

The film, Sankav, is one the many films that has made it to the India Film Project.

Only a month ago, some students of Smt. Kashibai Navale Medical College and General Hospital had made a short film on female foeticide, for a college competition of films based on subjects pertaining to health. The film went on to bag the ‘best film’ award at the competition. Their win gave the 13 medicos the confidence to apply for the India Film Project (IFP), which challenges its participants to make a film in 50 hours.

Their film, Sankav (Bridge), is one the many films that has made it to IFP, which has 1,85,067 entries in various categories, submitted by participants from Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, among other places.

The films shortlisted by the jury will be showcased at the festival on September 30 at NSCI, in Worli, Mumbai.

“We always wanted to make a movie and the IFP seemed to be a perfect platform to experiment and learn,” said Rudraprasad Karpe, one of the students involved with the film, who is pursuing his Masters in ophthalmology. He also happens to be the writer, cinematographer, producer, music composer and director of Sankav, which portrays the broken relationship between a husband and wife.

Most of the students in the group are undergraduate MBBS students. Other members in the team include Dipak Patil, Ashrit Rale, Ajay Singh, Sagar Singh, Adwait Abhyankar, Saket Roy and Sourav Kumar, among others.

Speaking about the challenges of making a film within 50 hours, Karpe says, “Music is the most important element of our film and composing an original song was a big challenge for us. We decided the shooting location at the last moment and had to convince our faculty to support us, as our budget was limited. We edited the film in five hours and managed to submit the film by the deadline.”

In the competition, the 50-hour challenge begins once the team is given the subject. The students were given the subject of the film at 8 pm on September 15. They shot the film on September 16, from 3.30 pm to 10.30 pm, and edited it the next day, from 7 am to 12 pm. After adding background music, they uploaded the film on the same day, at 8.30 pm.

“It was a difficult task… but we were motivated by our passion… somehow, we managed it,” says Karpe.

IFT is Asia’s largest festival for content creators from across genres — film, lifestyle, fashion, culinary arts, comedy and more. Other than a film-making competition, the event also includes panel discussions with known personalities like Ashutosh Gowariker, Gauri Shinde, Devdutt Pattanaik, Neha Dhupia, Dia Mirza, Nikhil Advani, and Tanmay Bhatt, among others. The jury members are Ram Madhvani, Vipul Shah and Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury.