I too made a love story, once.

The year was 2009. Some friends wanted to make an anthology film, together. Each had to make a film about Bangalore, with a different emotion or genre each. I picked love. (Don’t judge me, I was only 25 – when we were writing for this hypothetical project – and was all kinds of optimistic.) So anyway, filmschool still hung heavy in my head and I spoke about Before Sunrise day and night to anyone who would listen. And Punch Drunk Love. And Nottinghill. And Love Actually. So I wrote a shortfilm about being in Bangalore and looking for love. A kind of love story that wasn’t. But the project never happened, for a variety of reasons. For one, I was assisting in the first feature film set I had been on. Fast forward to a couple of years later, I was still looking at my script rather nervously, wondering what to do. You see, back in filmschool I had once written a full script but had hesitated to shoot; much to the displeasure of my Direction prof. And now again I wondered if I was too comfortable to just write these fluffy little scripts and mothball them, without ever risking going on the floor with them. 2011 was the year I decided that I would do something. Something.

I got in touch with a close friend from college, Harsh Joshi. And totally hoodwinked him into partnering up on a film production company. We decided we would make a set of shortfilms and see if we could make something of it. (You know, because in 2011 in a world without 100Mbps broadband, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, selling 3 short films made on HDV that’s ~2/3rds the resolution of FullHD, by a bunch of nobodies in an indie style would’ve been sooo easy to sell. Not!). 3 films, 3 genres, this love story about Bangalore; the one about simmering hate from filmschool I’d mothballed, and one that Harsh came up with, a bloody brilliant suspense thriller. So we made the first film. And released a promo.

I assure you reader, the usage of both phrases in the promo, ‘nice guys’ and ‘mean girls’ were meant to be ironic… Not at all sexist. God promise. But I digress.

Anyway, the promo went up, and I kinda finished the edit (the end was to tie into the trilogy) but then… Well, let’s just say- starting stuff is easy. We shot bits for the thriller. Auditioned actors for the hate film. And things just diffused into ether. So I locked this film up in my vimeo profile and got onto writing my feature film. Despite the advice of many just kept Amelenayithu hidden away, the embarrassment of incompletion weighing on my conscience. But come November this year, it will be 10 years since I shot this film, and as of Feb 12^th, 9 years since I first showed the film to anyone other than my crew. Perhaps it’s time to cast off whatever shame still lingers and share this silly film we made, and had a lot of fun making. So, to mark the occasion of inaugurating this blog (and hope to take it to fruition unlike that set of short films) I’m making the public Amelenayithu available for public viewing right here. (Oh it’s also Valentine’s Day this weekend, so if you’re a Hallmark stooge, then this love story is for you too) Hope you like it!

Watch the film here!