Coming out of the Cocoon

The ‘Yes I Am the Change’ 101-Hour Social Filmmaking Challenge was the reason for the three-minute short film Cocoon. The World’s Largest Social Film Movement has the participation of over 13 lakh individuals from across India. Amongst the 15 films that finally won, Cocoon from Kerala directed by Syam Seethal was clearly a cut above the rest.

“The participants make three-minute short films on social causes which form an open repository for the use of NGOs,” Syam explains. The topics given to Syam were woman empowerment, responsible citizenship and education; Syam chose education.

A Zen Buddhist story proved to be an inspiration for the storyline as he narrates, “The story is about boy A, who keeps on talking ill of boy B, emotionally bullying him. A teacher loses her money and immediately, boy A points fingers at B, who is a constant target. The teacher takes A aside and tells him that she has got back her money which she had misplaced. She asks A to write down all the accusations he has made about B, tear it into pieces and throw it. The next day, the teacher asks A to gather all those paper bits, which A cannot do. The teacher explains that like the bits of paper that are now spread far and wide, A’s accusations of B too have spread to all corners and much like the paper bits that cannot be found and put back again, the same goes for B’s reputation too.”  

While it did not take Syam more than the blink of an eye to choose the subject education, making the three-minute short film was a Herculean task. He was faced with obstacles all along the way, “The school which promised to allow us to shoot denied permission at the last minute. I lost one day on that; the actress I hired didn’t show up so I had to cast my wife. The school which gave permission said they would allow us to shoot only if we cast one of their kids, so I had to cancel the kid I previously selected and run an audition on the last day with one of their students. So the shoot started at 12 pm on the last day and then the laptop did not work. So we had to use the pilot track. And we had to wind up shoot when the school closed. Considering the lunch break too, we got only four hours to shoot, another four hours to edit, mix and upload.”

Syam surmounted all those problems and won. He expresses his elation in these words, “Four hours, a Rs 438 budget and we won!”

More valuable than the one lakh prize money was the appreciation from veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal, who, after viewing the winning films, asked for the director of Cocoon and appreciated his work personally.

Syam has been working as the Chief Assistant director to Malayalam director Sugeet and has been in the industry since 2003. Before signing off, he shares his plans, “I am writing the script for a film which I want to direct!”