Abhinav Kamal of IMT-N is creating what he wants to be a part of

Unconventional as though it may sound for a management student to go on to make short films, one of which would go on to win a prize from LIBA, Chennai, Abhinav Kamal is not your archetypal management student to begin with. Having grown up in seven different cities of India, and with an education received from eight different institutions, he has had a lot of exposure to different people across diverse cultural backgrounds.

A student of IMT- Nagpur, Abhinav would just have been one of the top brilliant students of India, studying and earning his Management degree from one of the pioneer institutes, had he not had a keen sense of movies since his childhood. A passionate and tenacious moviemaker, he directed a short film on anti-smoking, Swing, which has won the Best Short Film Award in the festival Hollywood Boulevard, LIBA Chennai- an event which was judged by the famous Tamil filmmaker Cheran.

 “Having coming from a family where education is of utmost importance, literature, music, dance, films have always been a part of me”

Dissecting every movie he watched as a child, he developed a forte for direction, being an observant member of the audience, and criticizing the director’s work of all the films he watched. He realized there were many loopholes in the works he saw and remained unsatisfied as a cerebral member of the audience. His discontent with the storytelling and lack of directorial sense in the films he watched were probably the causes that prodded him to make a movie of his own where he could experiment and improve. Abhinav believes that an ordinary short film can be made into an extra-ordinary one with some of the basic ingredients of filmmaking: An interesting screenplay, a strong script, sincere artists and visual aesthetics all brought together by a passionate director with an innate sense of movie making.

Abhinav has an avant-garde outlook towards movies.

Abhinav sees his management lessons and creativity inter-fusing with each other all the time. He says, “A film is a product. A director is a leader, captain and a creative manager for its team in the process of making the product. The process of filmmaking demands many intelligent decisions to be taken, keeping in account your available resources. You need to know the segment of audience to which you intend to focus the film on. I feel management is not just about running business and making profits, it is about being informed and making better decisions, irrespective of the field of work. Management is a way you live your life. It is an art of implementing your crazy ideas but with proper blue print.”

Abhinav’s small production house- Ten Motion Arts intends to forward a common platform to like-minded creative people who have the talent to contribute positively in filmmaking but don't have any sponsors to support them.

Swing – a short film on anti smoking is close to my heart.

Abhinav, Rajesh K and his other team members experimented and explored many new techniques of cinematography in this film. The film is a visual delight with a very unique way of storytelling. “We wanted our audience to think” states Abhinav. After all a good movie is one which makes the audience feel the story, rather than just tell a story.

“An ordinary short film becomes extraordinary through its basic ingredient: An interesting screenplay, a strong script, sincere artists and visual aesthetics. Not to forget, a passionate director.”

“The Danish film ‘Little Man’ is my favorite. Closer home, I follow, Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bharadwaj’s films a lot, and take lessons from their genre and style of filmmaking.”

A movie buff and an experimental film-maker, Abhinav has come a long way considering he has no formal education in film making and editing. It is his passion for film-making which instigated him to organize the National Short Film Festival at IMT-Nagpur. Abhinav and his team were instrumental in making the film festival a huge success. It garnered a lot of interest from the national and the local media alike.

Watch out for this cerebral filmmaker, who might very soon make his institute proud and join the small handful of filmmakers who believe a film is a perception of reality seen through the eyes of an artist and painted on the canvas of an editing table.