Village Rockstars

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.

• James Cameron

Village Rockstars : A film by Rima Das

Rima Das , You're Incredible.. Cant express how much i feel after watching this film. Loved it. Everything i saw i felt real.. Movie tells about many things and many of them personally touched me... #Dreams , Death , Childhood , Friendship , Culture , Poverty , Flood , Survival...

Editing , Cinematography , Written , Produced & Directed by Rima Das

65th National Awards - Best Film , Best Child Artist : Bhanita Das , Best Location Sound Recordist : Mallika Das

"Selected for India's official entry to 91st Academy Awards".

Like what Sanal Kumar Sasidharan said "Rima Das, the one woman army in the Indie film field in India! She writes, she shoots, she edits and she goes to Oscars!! "

"You Must See Before You Die"

Village Rockstars really rocks! I love the way of the presentation of the film. Rima Das shows the strength of the will power... Not emotionally but logically I'm saying that Village Rockstars must be nominated for Oscar. That's what it deserves. Oscar award is dependent completely upon the Oscar's Jury members... I immensely hope so.

A masterwork is usually the result of strict adherence to artistic and functional rules. Village Rockstars respects none: it dons a raw, innocent cloak and exudes a degree of purity that deliberate craft can never bestow on a film... The film stands for something that is always under threat: the courage to ignore the reality that life is exceedingly difficult for cinema that is made on the margins of a giant production machinery and recognise that there always are ways out for those who revel in battling the odds, no matter how daunting, and overcoming them.

Village Rockstars is a unique film. It's unique in the sense that at no point does the action or the acting seem staged. It's almost like a fly-on-the-wall (or should I say fly-in-the-grass!) perspective. As we watch a mother and her two children, a girl and her friends, a group of villagers dealing with flood, we feel we might have been sitting next to them - lying there on the grass, sharing their meal, rowing with them across an overflowing river, looking up at children perched on a tree.

Right from the first shot, Village Rockstars is reminiscent of the Satyajit Ray masterpiece Pather Panchali, as if shifted a few decades in time. Art and literature are often bound by the confines created by the hand of the modern market, so it is a matter of joy that cinema like this has made it through the filters, and is being seen and heard way outside where such action and such sentiments still hold sway. For this alone, the film deserves to be celebrated. It's useless talking about the plot, not because there isn't one, but because it would be beside the point. It's also futile to talk about the technique, the acting, the music. Because here's a work that renders all such details meaningless in its glorious magnanimity, its guileless honesty. All the viewer needs to do is leave inhibitions at the door and float along. And if you can let the gentle waves of simplicity and innocence - that this short and beautiful work is - wash over you, the experience is sure to leave you richer in ways that our worldly possessions can't dare to dream of doing.

Indie and offbeat art movies are not everyone's cup of tea. Village Rockstar doesn't fall under the art film category but as Utpal Borpujari said "You can't go more Indie than Village Rockstar". A movie made by one woman crew, investing her own money, working with untrained actors, and dedicating 5 years of her life harvesting in a film is a feat people should respect if not laud. To understand VR one needs to understand the geography where its filmed. An amateur review posted in the platform writes that despite all the hindrance the film sorts out everything just like magic. The hindrance mentioned were: flood, and puberty (which was mysterious)... Now, lets get the facts right: 1) When puberty hits a female its always sudden, there's no warning sign 'I'm coming..." and puberty is not a hindrance at all, so I guess that's the reason we see the lead , Dhunu being normal after the ceremony. 2) Flood after it subsides thing gets back to normal. Since, its a feature length film the maker didn't really have time to show how the lead overcame each and every hindrance... May be if it was a TV series like say "OFFICE" then the maker could have focused on each and every details liked 'flood & puberty' which were just subplots of the movie.

All in all the movie is a great lesson for aspiring filmmakers. It dragged a bit,a nd the end was a little abrupt, but kudos to the makers for the effort and the heart to bring out this gem out of nowhere.