‘India In a Day’ Documentary by Richie Mehta released on YouTube

GOA

Richie Mehta, a Canadian film director of Indian origin showcased his documentary ‘India In a Day’ at the 47th International Film Festival of India and it is released today on YouTube. The documentary supported by Google India, is his fourth project and special for having crowd-sourced all of its footage. The team received over thousands of entries of footage shot by Indian citizens reflecting a day in their lives. Mr Mehta spoke today about the creative process involved behind producing the documentary at the Press Conference in IFFI, Goa.

Richie Mehta said that in the last fifteen years he has spent six months every year in India. His life experiences in India acted as a source of inspiration for him which made him come back again and again to India. His earlier two movies ‘Amal’ and ‘Siddharth’ were shot in Delhi. He further added that there was a stylistic change in the way documentaries were being directed. There was an amalgamation of fiction with reality and though there has been continuous experimentation with this medium, the most important thing was to catch hold of the basic sentiment. 

Richie Mehta said that a filmmaker has to constantly fight to capture the attention of the audience. In doing so, the value of script has remained unchanged and is very important to filmmaking. To this, Ms. Rosalie Varda also added that, a good script can make a good movie or a bad movie but a bad script will always do a bad movie.

Ms. Rosalie Varda, a French Costume designer for film theatre and opera, emphasised on the importance of costume for films whether it’s a long feature film or a short. It is the first thing that people observe when they see the characters in the film and how they look like. Sharing her experience as a costume designer, she told that it is desirable to reinvent costumes & fashion specific for the story in collaboration with the Director, which she found as the most interesting part of the job.

She added that films not only reflect fashion as found on streets or in society in the present but at times it is also influenced by films, as fashion is a dynamic and ever evolving with time. Ms Varda, who has been the designer at the Cannes for over ten years, also conducted a special Master Class session today on Costume designing at the Maquinez, Panjim, Goa.