A Dark Twist to a Beloved Bengali Poem for Children
Filmmaker Prosit Roy talks about the making of his short film ‘Bloody Moustache’.
Bloody Moustache is a short film inspired by Sukumar Ray’s ‘Goph Churi’ – a poem for children about a man who thinks his moustache has been stolen. Prosit Roy’s film, however, features an unexpected twist.
Prosit Roy writes about how the film came about.
Since I was a child, I was fascinated with the idea that a moustache is an integral part of one’s identity. I saw the care that my father put into maintaining his moustache and the reactions of my friends and relatives when I shaved off my own moustache for the first time.
The inspiration for Bloody Moustache came from Sukumar Ray’s immortal poem ‘Goph Churi’. Although it was written for kids, I thought it had a great psychological angle that could be explored in a film for adults. Shaving off a long-kept moustache can be easily related to the psychological turbulence one faces when their identity is in crisis.
From its inception to the completion of the project, Bloody Moustache took around 5 months.
The biggest challenge was shooting the film in one day. At one point, after an amazing take, our sound recordist Prabirda asked for a retake. While I didn’t want a retake because of time constraints, he insisted, because of a strange noise that was disrupting the soundtrack. After some investigation, we realised that the sounds were the snores of our coproducer Avishek who had fallen asleep after an overnight shoot.
Bloody Moustache was the official selection at the 15th Annual New York Indian Film Festival and was also nominated in the best short-film category. It was recently nominated at the 8th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala.
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