Colours on Camera
Pulkit Vasudha
Captured on camera, the colours of his canvas are raking rave reviews in film festivals from art and cinema connoisseurs. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone V), Ahmedabad, Ajay Chaudhary’s abstract scratches and hatches in black, white and shades of grey have carved a niche for themselves in the world of colours.
When filmmaker Dharmendra Nath Ojha decided to make a documentary on abstract paintings, Chaudhary’s work was the perfect medium for Ojha to script the journey of abstraction. Ojha’s 20 minute documentary A Stroke with Square required two months of research and seven days of shooting.
The documentary is being screened at the Kolkata Film Festival on November 13, and will be screened at the Mumbai International Film Festival in January 2008. The film’s clippings and posters were showcased at the world’s largest cinema hub, the Cannes Film Festival 2007, by a group of NRIs who thought that it represented the essence of Indian docu-dramas.
A Stroke with Square finds space for masters of abstraction like Dali, Picasso and Hussain though it is primarily Chaudhary’s sense and vision of the abstract which is being used to tell the story. “A painting is nothing but time frozen in a frame, and time terminates at the juncture that it meets the art that captures it. Art can surpass boundaries of time but can never define the infinite,” says Chaudhary who has been an abstract painter for almost 12 years.
Using colours and the camera, the film flatters the fluidity of space, time and art to inspire abstraction. Chaudhary’s square canvases lend the dark hues to the camera frames, while the camera follows the artist through his moods of abstraction – from a dark, rainy evening and a cascading shower to thick red paint knocked off a table.
Anupam Jyoti, a Mumbai-based music composer has given the music for this film. Interestingly, Jyoti’s music and Chaudhary’s art are a harmonious symphony – Chaudhary often paints while Jyoti plays at his keyboard, both deriving inspiration from the each other. “Our eyes can only see so much – there are many colours beyond our scope of vision. The square frame of an artist’s canvas is the window through which the limitless can be seen. Chaudhary’s paintings are the storyteller in this film.”
Source: Indian Express