Video Game does India proud!

Vipin Vijay did India proud. His short film Video Game made in Malayalam, has won the Tiger Award at the recently concluded Rotterdam Film Festival, and has thus become the first Indian film to win the award.

The 36th International Film Festival, Rotterdam (IFFR), held in Rotterdam, Netherlands, had 27 under-thirty-minute films competing for the Tiger Awards, Video Game being the only entry from India. The film got selected for the awards along with Hinterland by Geoffrey Boulangé (France) and The Flag (Bayrak) by Köken Ergun (Turkey).

Produced by Rajiv Mehrotra for the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) and scripted by Vipin himself with Debkamal Ganguly, Video Game also features camera by Vipin Vijay (VV) himself.

Always keen on experimenting with short films, VV's Video Game is a complex video journey on a motor car. The journey speaks at many levels and of many things - the evolution of the automobile, the evolution of cinema and the evolution of the filmmaker as an individual.

The jury judging the films for the award noted that "Video Game is yet another illustration that there's more to Cinema of Indian origin than can be contained within the received wisdom, which seeks to confine it to a dualism opposing Satyajit Ray to Bollywood." The jury made special mention of Video Game's "relentless, complex post-modern intelligence."

Vipin Vijay, hailing from Kozhikode, is a product of the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata and has made some other notable short films too. When contacted after the awards were announced, Vipin declared in a very excited and happy tone: "I am really happy, not just because my film got the award, but because this recognition would prove to be a real stimulus to filmmakers like me who'd always love to experiment with the medium of cinema. I hope that now more and more young, experimental filmmakers will dare to come out with all kinds of films".

Video Game has now been invited to eight international film festivals and it is heard that Dutch TV is interested in taking up distribution of the film. VV is currently working on a full length feature film, his first one, with a support from Hubert Bals Film Fund, Rotterdam. It will be a 90-minute Malayalam film shot in the 35 mm format. It will have three characters in the main - one a grandfather who is an expert in Black Magic; two his young grandson who is obsessed with the world of computers and the Internet; and a third who appears mostly on the computer screen. The film will be scripted by Vipin himself and will start rolling soon.