Srinivas Sunderrajan or Vaas
[RollingStone]
Scribe Bassist Srinivas Sunderrajan Extends Funding Deadline For His Second Film
/ref>[NH7]
Guerrilla Video, The Enter Guerrilla Story
/ref> is an Indian musician and an independent filmmaker based in Mumbai
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...
, widely known for his films - The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project
''The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project'' is a 2010 Indian film produced and directed by independent filmmaker Srinivas Sunderrajan. It is a Hindi-English drama-thriller film with English subtitles shot on HDV in black-and-white. It is touted as ...
, and Greater Elephant.[The Hindu]
His own story, almost
/ref> He is the co-founder of a DIY production house Enter Guerrilla Films, and has directed the third season of The Dewarists
''The Dewarists'' is a musical television series on MTV India. The series is part music documentary and part travelogue. The show casts musicians from various parts of the world, collaborating to create original music while travelling across In ...
. He is currently the bass player for Mumbai’s hardcore band, Scribe
A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.
The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promi ...
.
Career
Early years
Srinivas assisted on the independent Hindi film - The Pool, directed by Chris Smith and starring Nana Patekar
Vishwanath Patekar (born 1 January 1951), better known as Nana Patekar, is an Indian actor, screenwriter, film maker, and a former Indian Territorial Army officer, mainly working in Hindi and Marathi cinema. He is regarded as one of the finest an ...
. The film won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...
.
After this experience Srinivas created two short films - Tea Break and Vaapsi.
Tea Break won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) is an annual film festival held in Los Angeles, California. Established by Christina Marouda in 2003, as a nonprofit organization devoted to paving the way for a greater appreciation of Indian cinema , and Vaapsi won the Best Short at the MAMI festival in Mumbai.
The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project
The story is about a software professional who wants to become a filmmaker, his love interest, a corrupt cop and a talking robot. Billed as India’s first Mumble Core film, Srinivas produced and directed The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project
''The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project'' is a 2010 Indian film produced and directed by independent filmmaker Srinivas Sunderrajan. It is a Hindi-English drama-thriller film with English subtitles shot on HDV in black-and-white. It is touted as ...
with a budget of only Rs. 40,000 (Roughly less than 1000 USD). The black and white drama-thriller went on to be the first Indian film, to be screened at the Transilvania International Film Festival
The Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF; ro, Festivalul internațional de film Transilvania) is the first international feature film festival in Romania, which is held annually in the historic capital of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca. Found ...
. After seeing an initial screening Anurag Kashyap
Anurag Kashyap (born 10 September 1972) is an Indian filmmaker and actor known for his works in Hindi cinema. He is the recipient of several accolades, including four Filmfare Awards. For his contributions to film, the Government of France aw ...
helped to promote the film.
Greater Elephant
Peppered with dark humour, the film follows the mahout
A mahout is an elephant rider, trainer, or keeper. Mahouts were used since antiquity for both civilian and military use. Traditionally, mahouts came from ethnic groups with generations of elephant keeping experience, with a mahout retaining h ...
who goes on a unique quest to recover his elephant. Srinivas planned Greater Elephant in his college days, long before The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project
''The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project'' is a 2010 Indian film produced and directed by independent filmmaker Srinivas Sunderrajan. It is a Hindi-English drama-thriller film with English subtitles shot on HDV in black-and-white. It is touted as ...
took shape. Sunderrajan says that the narrative style in the film has been kept simple as the story is layered with metaphorical meanings. "Since the script takes the story forward, there was no room for visual or camera gimmicks," says Sunderrajan.
He chose to crowdfund the distribution of the film saying, “I see crowdfunding as a platform that is 'of the people, by the people and for the people' — where 'people' are the cinema viewers," adding that getting a film to a local cinema is an expensive process and distribution systems in India are archaic.
The film premiered at the South Asian Film Festival in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
, and won the Jury Prize for the Best Narrative Feature of 2011.
In August 2012, Greater Elephant secured a release date in San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
where it was screened as a part of the Indian Film Festival of Hope, and in Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
at a festival called CPH PIX.
Heartless Ramesh
Srinivas has announced his third film titled Heartless Ramesh, that would fall under the genre of mythological fiction. The film would be a fusion of science fiction concepts and Hindu mythological philosophies. “As the synopsis says it’s about a celestial event that signifies the end of time, advent of Kalki
Kalki ( sa, कल्कि), also called Kalkin or Karki, is the prophesied tenth and final incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. He is described to appear in order to end the Kali Yuga, one of the four periods in the endless cycle of exis ...
and how the government of the future decides to handle it” says Srinivas, “There’s also a love story in it somewhere.” he adds.[SaddaHaq]
Srinivas Sunderrajan: The audience can defy a film's small-scale stature
/ref>
Awards and nominations
*Grand Jury Prize for Best Short at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (Tea Break)
*Best Short at the MAMI festival (Vaapsi)
*Jury Prize for the Best Narrative Feature (Greater Elephant)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sunderrajan, Srinivas
Indian bass guitarists
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people