Documentary film on Tamil Nadu’s folk deities and oral histories

Nagercoil-based Rec709 team creates brand films, delves into documentary filmmaking, and embarks on ambitious project on Tamil Nadu's folk deities.

Nagercoil-based T Elstin Raj and team from the start-up Rec709, often found themselves drawn to little things that added character to their seaside town. Their media start-up shoots brand films and does digital marketing, and they travel across Tamil Nadu on work. With knowledge on the technicalities of film making and the required equipment at hand, they eventually forayed into documentary film making during their free time. With over ten short documentaries on the people and culture of Kanyakumari to their credit, they are now shooting their most ambitious project yet: Sacred Stones.

“The film is on the folk deities of Tamil Nadu,” says 26-year-old Elstin, who does the research, coordination, and editing. He explains that the inspiration came from the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, which they attended last year. “We wanted to screen our films at the festival, and hence set out to shoot something a little longer than our usual formats,” he says, adding that their film will be around 40 minutes long.

“A friend suggested we document the folk deities of Kanyakumari district, and after the initial research, we found that the subject was vast, that it cannot be contained within one district,” says Elstin. They then expanded to include South Tamil Nadu, and went on to interview experts such as Chenthee Natarajan, a historian and researcher based in Nagercoil, and writer SJ Sivashankar, who has written on the subject from an anthropological perspective.

The initial reels on the film on Instagram went viral, with their content churning debates and discussions. This was when the team understood the potential of their subject, and luckily for them, Che Media offered to produce the film, encouraging them to include folk deities from across Tamil Nadu.

The team is now in the second phase of the shoot, having documented folk deities in Nagercoil and Kanyakumari. An interesting piece of information they collected is on the sumaithangi stones, often found in the outskirts of villages. The structure, where three rectangular stones are arranged in the shape of a bench, was used by passers-by to place loads they balanced on their heads, while they paused to catch their breath.

“The film requires extensive travel and field work to record oral and documented history,” points out Elstin, adding that they hope to wrap it up by March next year. “We will then take it across the documentary film festival circuit,” he says. S Viswanathan is the director and cinematographer while R Imayaselvan is the producer. C Ashik Christo is an additional cinematographer.