Homi Adajania has been one director who has always come up with eccentric stories, and somehow made the audiences connect to them. That magical exuberance was seen in all his films. Whether it was Being Cyrus (2006), Cocktail (2012) or Finding Fanny (2014), all of them had that funny yet relatable factor.
That abstract way of storytelling is similar to what his protégé, Arunima Sharma, has come up with in Yellow Tin Can Telephone, one of the 7 short films in the anthology Shor Se Shuruaat. The story is about a girl who has an overdeveloped sense of hearing and a boy who has an overdeveloped sense of ‘association of colours’. The world is too noisy for her. The world is too colourful for him. He lives in black and white. She lives in silence. Isn't it already sounding like quite an interesting plot to explore?
Well, talking about Arunima, Homi says that he doesn't have quarter of the knowledge about filmmaking that Arunima has. Apart from heaping praise on her, Homi also informs that Arunima has a very nice way of calling a spade a spade. And that was the thing that Homi was looking for while selecting an Assistant Director.
An interesting revelation that Homi made is that he hadn't done anything related to films before Being Cyrus happened. Strangely when he spoke to Naseeruddin Shah, Boman Irani and the rest of the cast, no one ever asked him whether he had directed a film before. They all kind of presumed that he had made some movie before or maybe he makes ads.
Talking about the other mentors in Shor Se Shuruaat - Zoya Akhtar, Imtiaz Ali, Shyam Benegal, Mira Nair, Nagesh Kukunoor, Sriram Raghavan - Homi said that it was very difficult for him to chose a favourite. Jokingly he said that when the audience sees Shor Se Shuruaat, they would ask why the mentors didn't make the films themselves.
Shor Se Shuruaat will also feature other short films like Dhvani, Decibel, Azaad, Mia I'm, Hell O Hello and Aamer - all made under the common theme of 'Shor' (Noise).
Produced by Preety Ali, Vinay Mishra and Pallavi Rohatgi under the banner of Humara Movie, Shor Se Shuruaat hits theatres worldwide this Friday.