NAMASTE

Filmmaking is never easy and each film has its own voyage. The voyage of Namaste began with the influence of hippie culture since 2011. Having spent almost seven years in close contact with a subculture that proved to be one of the most influential and pro-active groups in American history, influencing fashion, shaping the face of music, culture and beyond. The trekking in the villages of Parvati valley and interactions with the local groups influenced by the psy-trance and hippie culture in Goa nurtured this story for over two years.

Ankit (Director of Photography for Namaste) came into the picture maybe around one year ago, when we started working together as co-founders of Chitra Saga and entrusted him with the job of producing the film. Ankit and I go back a long way, almost 15 years I think, when we were in school together.

The name Namaste is inspired from Vini Vici’s song Namaste, it’s the voice-over: “I humbly bow down to the true you. The true you that's inside this body. The true essence of your atman, your true self. I bow down and I honor that. And as I look at you, I see that true you through your eyes into your soul and I let you see me. It's Namaste!“ This particular line explains one’s acceptance of himself or herself in every version, be it bad or good.
Additionally, the voice-over appears at the end of the film.
Namaste is not just an experimental film, but a story through my eyes about an indecisive girl (Anna, the protagonist), who is usually troubled by her own subconscious and thoughts. This is a story about Anna, who becomes content as the film precedes with an experimental narrative perspective, meaning the imagery and visual language will be an experiment in itself which I have been inspired from the famous liquid light shows in the 60s, which altered the consciousness of one’s mind and connected one to the new ideas and ways of seeing the world that were outside mainstream media.

Additionally, the narrative will be fiction but, the narrative will be very minimal. Moreover, the minimal idea of narrative in inspired from Gene Youngblood, who is a theorist of media arts and politics, and a respected scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas believes that synaesthesis is “the harmony of different or opposing influences produced by a work of art,” and that synaesthetic cinema is “the only aesthetic language suited to contemporary life.” For Youngblood, synaesthetic cinema meant the end of narrative: a time when film becomes purely a language of light, space and sound. There will be less dialogues or no dialogues at all which is now called minimalist music, combined with lush visuals, in an attempt to guide viewers toward hypnotic states. In Youngblood’s taxonomy, “synaesthesia” and “psychedelic” are synonymous.

The film moves forward with fashion attempts and aesthetics of the subculture along with the subjects in the film being accustomed to the psychedelic fashion and styling. The status of fashion as a designed object is foregrounded. Hair, makeup and styling supports the character which also supports the key fashion objects featured. Creative and innovative hair and makeup designs complement the avant-garde representation.

Paul Clipson, San Francisco based Experimental Filmmaker who passed away at the age of 52 on 3rd February 2018, I channeled my inspirations form his mastery of analogue film techniques into an appealingly improvisatory filmmaking style; most of his work was shot on Super8 or 16mm. 'When I had a chance to watch Paul while he was filming, how he made his films, it felt like a silent dance,' says the renowned musician Tashi Wada. 'It was clearly about the gesture and the rhythm, and this translates directly onto the screen, the image. It was as if Paul was tracing the motion of his eye with light, one shot after another like strokes of a brush.' New footage would be often overlaid with older footage, in a constant process of adding and subtracting.

Namaste, is not just a tribute to Paul Clipson, it is also an inspiration from remarkable counter culture celebrities like Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Aldous Huxley, Ram Dass, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, etc. In the end, Namaste is not simply an experimental short which tells us about Anna’s finding herself amidst chaos and confusion in her subconscious or a subculture but, it tells us something about our own selves.