Filming at the time of quarantine!
| Date :11-May-2020 |
Bidita Bag and her co-star on the poster of the film on quarantine.
By Anshuman Bhargava :
Actress Bidita Bag is now a known face in Hindi and Bengali cinema and her Hindi flick opposite Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, released a couple of years back, garnered much critical acclaim. So, what’s the actor doing in this time of lockdown? Egged on by her creative spirit, Bag has made a short film capturing the mood of lockdown.
The Director of the movie is Mithun Debnath. Though the tone is predominantly a humorous take, it nevertheless sends across a strong message. The film is crisp and direct and involves just three actors, including Bag herself, at the forefront. The story is set in 2035 and life is shown in the light of an extended lockdown that had started in 2020. It is for 15 years that the world is under lockdown and lovers, Bag and her co-actor Mithun Debnath, have been unable to meet up for all these years. Their romance is limited to long-distance video calling and the pining lovers have no other way to physically be in each other’s presence.
The girl demurs the apathy of the boy, while the boy expresses his helplessness due to the lockdown, which bars him from meeting her. This is the situation for the last 15 years. The fun element is not just limited to the quirky on-screen chemistry between the two but also the fact that the fiancé is an Aladin, who has a magic lamp and a genie at his beck and call. The girl implores the boy to seek the help of the genie but the genie himself is locked down inside the lamp. He declares that had people been attentive to what the government and doctors said in 2020 and kept indoors, this long quarantine would not have happened and thus refuses any help. Bidita says, the film might look simple and easy but in this lockdown phase it was very difficult to put things together.
The logistic hurdles of distance and deprivation made it an arduous task to ideate, coordinate, collaborate and stich things together to put up the wonderful work. As the video is now garnering rave reviews, Bidita Bag is proud to have used her time fruitfully and driven home a useful message of staying back home to stave off the dangers of Covid-19. If we ignore the precautionary guidelines today, we may have to stay indoors for years. And life will be much more horrible then!