Private Project

Hear O, Mahatma

Wading through the hybrid mode of the Essay format, this film oscillates between documentary and fiction, invoking the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi to confront the vastly distorted zeitgeist.

Through the lives of three distinct individuals - a confused filmmaker who flows with the events that are thown at him, a dedicated social reformer whose impeccable rhetorical powers have lifted the social lives of the unentitled masses and a powerful but regressive poster boy mass leader of the far right - the film exposes the distorted contradictions of our times.

Being each other's doppelgangers, and of the filmmaker himself who plays all three roles, the trio alternatively share a common living space in a city of the state of Gujarat, India. Irrespective of the purpose of their visit to the city, they are bound together not just by thier looks, but also by the way they unchangingly indulge themselves in the very same mundane routine of eat-sleep-shit and repeat.

By juxtaposing their life trajectories, the film conjures up a provocative question: did Gandhi ever foresee the level at which the dangerous deformation that his legacy has now morphed into?

  • Ramchandra PN
    Director
    Suddha (The Cleansing Rites), Putaani Party (The Kid Gang), Haal-E-Kangaal (The Bankrupts)Bunnu K. Endo Maye
  • Ramchandra PN
    Writer
  • Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
    Writer
  • Sushma PN
    Producer
  • Ramchandra PN
    Producer
  • Ramchandra PN
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Feature, Other
  • Genres:
    Political, Social, Experimental, Docu-fiction
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 40 minutes 40 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 1, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Country of Filming:
    India
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Ramchandra PN

Ramchandra PN is a Mumbai based Indian filmmaker and a 1990 graduate of the ‘Film and TV Institute of India’. Over the years, he has been making documentaries, features, short films and TV programs.

His short fiction film “Heart Troubles of Ramchand Yavathmal Tirchuinapalli Azamghar’ won the best short film at the Abuja International Film Festival, Nigeria in 2004. His first feature 'Suddha' (The Cleansing Rites) won him the Best Indian Film at the Osian Cinefan Festival of Asian Films, New Delhi Indian 2006. It also won the 'Hubert Bals' Distribution Grant in the same year, following which he showed the film in about 100 villages in Coastal Karnataka.

His second feature 'Putaani Party' (The Kid Gang) won the Best Children’s film at the Indian National Film Awards. 2009. It was in contention for Nomination for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in the same year. The PSBT (Public Service Broadcasting Trust) awarded a Fellowship to him for the year 2011, during which he made his documentary 'Rice & Rasam' (Anna Saaru).

His involvement in Film Academics includes conducting various workshops and leading the direction departments in Film & Media Colleges. He also writes on Cinema and has curated special packages, has served as a selection committee member as well as in the Jury at various Film Festivals; apart from being in the committees that commission film projects and mentors them in various governmental and non governmental organisations.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Independence from the British Empire gave us Indians an opportunity to tread the path of democracy. We hoped that Liberty, Fraternity and Equality would allow us to shred off the horrors of the centuries old caste system. But, as the architect of the Indian Constitution Dr BR Ambedkar had ruefully opined, a system that has been hardened over millenniums would be hard to discard.

The far right has its agenda of bringing all the four statified castes into the fold of what it calls 'hindutva'. Such a forced program would allow them to monopolize religious, cultural and political power. The so called 'unity' sought by them is also for the purpose of bringing everyone into the fold of the caste system and the status quo of the stratified hierarchy that it begets; the idea of which was being threatened post independence by our acceptance of the idea of democracy. They have now been in power for more than a decade making progress in the implementation of their regressive ideas. The clash between them and the liberal lot has now seems to have reached its zenith.

Being fiercly independent, this film tries to provide a slice of this clash - where people and institutions get destroyed and distorted. Accordingly, the visuals of this film aim to be perfectly imperfect. Flickers, pixels, blurred images, distorted sound scape, maimed visuals, frames within frames, meta references - all form the part of the mise en scene, which I thought would be an appropriate way of depicting the troubled spirt of our disjointed times.