Karishma Dev Dube, the director of Bittu, which was shortlisted for the Best Live Action Short Film segment at the 93rd Academy Awards, tells us more about the movie ahead of its screening at the Chitrashaala Short Film Festival.
The upcoming edition of Village Square’s Chitrashaala, being organised on August 3, has many firsts to it. Among them is the screening of the short film Bittu, which will be shown in Delhi for the very first time during the fest. The film was shortlisted among the top 10 in the Best Live Action Short Film segment at the 93rd Academy Awards.
The film tells the story of friends Bittu and Chand, who live in a Himalayan village, and how their friendship is eclipsed by an accidental poisoning at school. It follows the duo’s escapades, which establish the lead protagonist as a spirited, resilient young girl. Though the storyline is fictional, it borrows heavily from real life.
“I was deeply impacted by the accidental poisoning of 23 school kids in Bihar in 2013,” said Bittu filmmaker, Karishma Dev Dube, revealing that the story has some personal shades to it as well. Dube, who belongs to Delhi, attended the Graduate Film Programme at New York University and lives in the United States. In the story, she gives the children more agency than they may have had in real life, making the film more about them and their temperaments than the tragedy that unfolded.
“Through the film, I was interested in exploring the classroom culture. In such a setting everything is about power. Even the use of grammar is a tool for power,” said Dube, delving into the psychology behind parts of the film. Talking about her personal experience, she said, “I went to a boarding school in Dehradun that wasn’t far from where I shot Bittu. Ironically my own experience of the power dynamics at play in a classroom was similar to that of the government school students depicted in the film.”
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Dube says the film is a reimagination of the tragic events of 2013 from the perspective of the kids.
“Being an individual in a uniform society – how does that affect your friendships?” she said.
The stars of the film are Rani and Renu, who play Bittu and Chand, respectively. Casting them involved interactions with the residents of a village near Dehradun. Dube was familiar with the location of the setting because of her schooling years spent nearby. She identified an organic farm, which was later turned into a government school for the film.
“Two or three weeks after we had found the place, I chanced upon the community that Rani, who plays Bittu, belongs to. I didn’t want a professional child actor to play poverty, and Rani was the closest thing to the Bittu in my head,” Dube said.
She went on to cast the other characters in the film from the same village, including Renu, who is Rani’s friend in real life too. They shot the film two months later.
Making this movie wasn’t easy for Dube.
“I didn’t have enough money. We raised it through crowdfunding. This was also the first movie I was making outside my life experience. So one had to leave aside everything that one learns about filmmaking and surrender to many uncertainties. One of them was the kind of footage that I got working with the kids. Some of it ended up being like documentary material, with me talking to the children on set, and so on. It took me a year to complete this work,” she said.
When Bittu made it to the Academy Awards shortlist of the top 10 Best Live Action Short Film segment, it didn’t come as a surprise for Dube.
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“When you know you’ve got a shot, you have to work towards these things,” she said. “When the news came in, it still took me a long time to understand the implications. I was in the USA for three years during that time and couldn’t meet my family. But it was a welcome development,” she added.
Though Dube will not be there to attend the Chitrashaala festival on August 3 at New Delhi’s Alliance Francaise, she has some advice for the aspiring filmmakers who will attend the event.
“Things are dynamic in this industry and even the oldest filmmaker is always learning. Everything from the theatres to the distribution system is always changing. Stay curious, and keep learning,” she said.
Village Square’s Chitrashaala short film festival focuses on stories from rural India.
Date: August 3, 2024
Venue: Alliance Francaise, Lodhi Road, New Delhi
The lead image on top shows a still from the film Bittu, which made it to the top 10 of the Best Live Action Short Film segment of the 93rd Academy Awards.
Smriti Mukerji is a freelance journalist based out of New Delhi.
