Click to play videoMumbai: It's a first for Indian animation with Mumbai based Dhvani Desai's Manpasand based on a dying folk art winning at the New York Film and Video Awards this year.
Its been Dhvani's patient effort for over two years to bring to life traditional sketches of Sanjhi. She finally used this dying art form from Uttar Pradesh as a medium to animate the Panchatantra story Manpasand.
Now, after 10 nominations worldwide and an award in New York, Dhvani's efforts have paid off. Surprisingly, her desire to revive this folk art has a lot to do with a relationship that her film's story and the art form share.
Dhvani says, "Sanjhi in the seventeenth century was done by single women to look for their perfect match, and the story of Manpasand is also about finding one's perfect match, So I thought that this was a perfect fit."
Even though Dhvani had her own animation studio, Metamorphosis under her command, making the 10 minute film was not an easy task.
"It took 43 artists to make the paintings, and since Sanjhi is a Vaishnav form of art, a lot of characters didn't exist originally. So we had to first paint each and every character individually, and then the animation began," adds the animation filmmaker.
Dhvani now plans to follow up Manpasand with more short films that show case folk art.
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