Trisha Das’s film Fiddlers On The Thatch takes up a subject related to The Gandhi Ashram started by a missionary Father Edward McGuire in 1954 in Kalimpong, West Bengal. It is claimed Edward McGuire started his teaching career in Darjeeling in the eastern end of India. After a career of thirty-five years, he was said to have retired and began a little school on a patch of land in Kalimpong. Trisha Das who studied Advanced Digital Video at New York University seems interested in handling and experimenting in Matrix and has scripted and directed a series of ten short films and a documentary titled Steps and Strides. Her previous films include a series of spots The Millennium Mahatma on Mahatma Gandhi’s ideologies and is relevance today. Her film on the Railways got her applause.

Fiddlers On The Thatch ideally showcases the noble ideas that went behind Edward McGuire to help him building the Gandhian Ashram School, having a thatched roof. Edward McGuire took responsibilities of mainly coolies and road construction labourers by providing them free with “three square meals” and the services of “an inspired music teacher”. Interestingly parents and their children began responding to the social concept and the “music orchestra” grew. Trisha Das’s work brings to life the story of children of hard toil, aged between 4 and 14, and their talent. It recounts how these children of heaven have learnt the symphonies of Mozart, Vivaldi, Strauss and Scarletti among others through a 70-strong western classical music orcesra. Said the director, “The film is a heart-warming story of the triumph of the human spirit”.

The film has shown restricted life style of children of Kalimpong and their passion for music. That music has a soul and can transform our life is the bottom-line of the film. It has won the prestigious National award in the category of educational/motivational/instructional film. Produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) the film aims at building a community of documentary talents as well as creating a body of work, capable of empowering audiences with “images and sounds” that present India’s complex panorama of life. The citation says, “The film is a story of Gandhian Ashram School in Kalimpong but it is a story of the deprived kids gaining their dignity and hope of a teacher who fed their bodies and spirit - all bound by the common thread of music. The director achieves a poignant blend of visual and music to create tale of sharing and caring in the film”. Said the director, “Any film must serve a certain social purpose and should promote our social awareness. Slices of stray life have its own music and an artist should capture it. It is in yor hand to merge with ’nature’ and seek your subject for the film that focuses on life and its mystery of survival”.

Ladakh, The Land of Mystery, produced, directed and edited by Biyot Projna Tripathy (English), has won the National awar for the”best omotional film”. The film also has won her the Silver Conch award at the Mumbai International film festival for Shorts and Documentaries, 2004. In Mumbai where this critic headed “the Critics’ Jury” saw the film and found the director commenting “Ladakh, the land of many passes, is a civilisation, a world of its own.” Said she, “While making the film, I had to face a lot of natural hazards and high risks. I tried to capture the raw and rugged life of the Tibetans who have settled here against the fury of Nature and its claws. The film captures the Nurba Valley, the Pengong Lake and the pain of the uprooted people of Tibet who have sought shelter in Lakdakh for their cruel survival”.

The film also explores how the simplicity of Buddhism finds inner space into the lives of Ladakhis for whom it is a way of life and a religion for survival. Hidden in the Himalayan ranges, with their unique way of living, are those hard-hit people, free from the complexities of modern day survival process. The director has been making films for the last twelve years. Her earlier works include Jejima, Mahakumbh — A Spiritual Journey and Kham Zam Yadan, shot in Nepal. Though at times the film looks somewhat over-stretched snowy visuals, it shows with emotion how people in India are so much dependent on nature as in Ladakh. One gets awe-struck to encounter faces of children, smitten by snow-bite, red-faced, cold-driven and cruelty of nature. The citation says, “The award for the Best Promotional film of the year 2003 is given to Ladakh, The Land of Mystery, for capturing the shining landscape, the people, their culture, beliefs and way of life in pleasing visuals”. The other reason for making the documentary, said the director, was “to promote tourism in India and its panthean elegance and natural harmony”.

Shilpi Dasgupta’s Mangali: An Exorcision is a conscious effort to take on prevailing rituals and its odds in a remote village of Baruka, Chattisgarh. Before making her debut films she has assisted Samir Chanda on his feature film Pal Do Pal. To her credit lies a number of plays that she has so far directed for all India Radio, Bhopal. As a student she has also directed a number of shorts; her film Hope, made on senior citizens and their travails, is a much-talked about. In the film Mangali : An Exorcision, she has set her agent Mangali to act in between a ritual and her stand against all odds to fight it. The film opens an enigmatic question - will she be able to usher a new brave world? The film has won the Special ention of the Jury the citation of which reads thus: “The Special Mention for 2003 is made for innovative direction and for her maiden Mangali : An Exorcision for the thoughtful and laudable craft that shaped the film”.

In Sati Radhika (Assamese) Anjali Das has raised the social issue of “equality among the masses”. She has mainly drawn her inspiration from the great Vaishnavite saint Srimanta Sankaradeva and his religious teachings on equality of religion in a social space. It deals with the spirit of women to prove who is real “sati”(pure sacred woman) by pouring water with “a bamboo-fishing trap with big holes in the stream thrice” to construct a dike on the Tembouni stream - the main route of the flood water, apprehended to wash out the village Bordowa Sattra, sheltering them all. The film shows how a low-caste woman Radhika, in a challenge to the acts of upper-caste women, who fail to prove and win in the race, rides over all upper-caste women by means of “spiritual powers” to pour water from the hole-riddden bamboo trap, thereby making her the only Sati. Well, the film has mystic eements that may lead to misinterpretation of a myth and might send a wrong signal. But anyway the director has won the National award for the “best short fiction film”. Anjali Das who hs already worked on the shorts/documentaries such as Singhpho’s Culture, had assisted on the film Ghanashyam, the Architet 160 AD

Said she: “The efforts to stress on a kind of myth attached to spiritual realisation are there and one only needs to rationalise it.” The citation of the Jury board comments on the film thus: “The award for the Best Short Fiction film is given to Anjali Das for the Assamese film Sati Radhika which is a popular tale relating to the great 14th century reformer Shankara Deva who stood against caste in equality. The tale narrates an allegory where in Sati Radhika, a fisher-woman, performs a miraculous feat which others cannot, thus bringing on the noble concept of social equality”.