A film on local junkies in Slamdance competition

Ronny Sen

’s

Cat Sticks

is the only narrative feature from India to have made it to the competition section of

Slamdance

Film Festival, meant for indie films from the world over. Q’s Gandu had made it to the festival years back. Ronny is a photographer, who has already published two books and was invited to be an artiste-in-residence in Japan in 2013 and Poland in 2016. He was recently feted for his work in the Jharia coal mines and photographed the Indian general elections for the United Nations. Cat Sticks delves into the underbelly of Kolkata and revolves around stories of brown sugar addicts across the city.

About what inspired the story, Ronny said, “David Levi Strauss wrote a piece, A Threnody for Street Kids, for

Jim Goldberg

’s photographic installation, which later became the famous book, Raised by Wolves (1995). It also included a political action message (What Can Be Done?). In the essay, A Threnody..., the first few lines of a paragraph reads, ‘Like the angel of forgetfulness who touches us at birth to make us forget so that we can be born, there is another angel, I suspect, who touches us when we become adults, causing us to forget the abyss of adolescence.’ For us, perhaps this angel was brown sugar, which made us forget the dark abyss of adolescence. Cat Sticks is the story of our lives. It’s the collective experience of an entire generation who grew up with drugs on the streets of Kolkata in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Innocence, more than anything else and pure, unadulterated, unconditional love for drugs, and its eventual predictable ends and consequences inspired the story.”

Soumyajit Majumdar, who plays a junkie, Gere Bappa, revealed that he landed the part through audition. “I was closely associated with Tin Can and after the audition, discovered that my old acquaintances, Soumyak Kanti De Biswas and Tanaji Dasgupta, are helming the film, along with Theodore Shivdasani! I got introduced to Ronny after that. We had an extensive two-month workshop that led to the shooting,” he said.

Since Ronny has grown up with such stories of brown sugar addicts, there’s no pretence in the film. The unit eventually went for guerrilla shoot though Ronny’s approach was very international. No wonder, he’s a ‘glocal’ filmmaker to watch out for,” said Soumyajit. The actor, whose first film was Q’s Gandu, said he has an added reason to be happy. “Gandumade it to Slamdance and Berlin, among other festivals. Last year, I shot for French film Crash Test Algae, which premiered at Cannes. Now Cat Sticks, my 25th film, is starting its journey with Slamdance,” he added.

The film has an ensemble cast and also stars Tanmay Dhanania, one of the leads in Q’s Brahman Naman. DoP of the film is Shreya Dev Dube and the music director is British composer Oliver Weeks. The film’s poster has been designed by the iconic Polish artist Lech Majewski.

Slamdance has been the breeding ground for global talents. This is where Christopher Nolan showed his first film and the other festival discoveries include names like Marc Forster, Jared Hess, Oren Peli, Benh Zeitlin, Seth Gordon, Lynn Shelton and Lena Dunham. Cat Sticks will be competing with films like A Great Lamp (USA), Boni Bonita (Brazil, Argentina), Crystal Swan (Belarus, USA, Germany, Russia), Dollhouse: The Eradication of Female Subjectivity from American Popular Culture (USA, Canada), Hurry Slowly (Norway), Impetus (Canada), Lost Holiday (USA), Spiral Farm (USA) and The Vast of Night (USA).