Prataya Saha on 1924 - The Kakori Project: ‘How children become a casualty in political conflicts’

Bengaluru-based filmmaker, Prataya Saha on his film ‘1924 - The Kakori Project’, which premiered on the closing night of the Big Apple Film Festival in New York 

Bengaluru-based independent filmmaker, Prataya Saha’s ninth short film, 1924 - The Kakori Project, had its international premiere on the closing night of the Big Apple Film Festival in New York on December 12.

“The Big Apple Film Festival is one of the premier film festivals in the US in the independent film circuit,” says Prataya over call from Whitefiled. “They have a platform for shorts, feature films and screenplays. We are thrilled that 1924 - The Kakori Project was selected for the screening at the festival. One of our producers, Anshulika Kapoor, represented us in New York.”

Many of Prataya’s films have been screened at international film festivals and won awards. His Just Another Day (2021) won the Best Short film for against violence towards women in Turkey, Mein Mehmood (2022) won the Best Short Film at the Kolkata International Film Festival and the Best Cinematography award at Jaipur International Film Festival.

The challenges for short film makers are numerous, Prataya says, believing film festivals are perfect platforms to showcase shorts. “Short films do not have theatrical releases. Even streaming services do not take shorts. We have limited avenues to showcase our works. The maximum we can do is upload on YouTube or Vimeo.”

That is where festivals like the Big Apple Film Festival come in to fill the gap, Prataya says. “They are great launch pads for filmmakers like us, as we do not have a platform for shorts. It is in film festivals like this that we find a captive audience, who not only watch the film but also interacts with us.”

Prataya shares that 1924 - The Kakori Project was nominated for the Best Short film award. Large platforms also open doors for distributors across the globe, Prataya says. “Festivals like this come as a light at the end of the tunnel and game changer for us.”

Shorts are doing better today than they did five years ago. “Feature films now have cut down on their length from 140-minutes to 80 to 90 minutes. Even shows, which earlier had hour-long episodes have cut down to as little as 25 minutes. People’s attention span of people has come down and in the future shorts will get a chance to be monetised.”