NAREN MULTANISearch WILDsound  At the time of writing, Naren Multani has a 25-minute short film titled “Apollo Bunder, Mumbai 400001” that’s being screened worldwide as part of the official selection at Washougal, Cambridge, Stepping stone, Lightup and Zero Film Festivals. Apollo Bunder is also among the top 250 films on Trailor Addict. Once again, Naren’s work shows his weakness for darker subjects. The film deals with the new reality of organized terror attacks in our lives. These are days when we unknowingly get sucked into the web of negative thought and action. A terror attack that happens in one city ends up consuming human lives across the world. Naren’s artistic temperament was nurtured by creative influences from the world of art, photography, books, advertising and from cinema masters like Bergman, Godard, Lars Von Trier and Wong Kar-Wai among others. All known for their original and provocative work. From Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai to McCann-Erickson India as Creative Director Films, Naren has created more than 80 commercials for iconic brands. Despite a demanding advertising schedule, he writes and shoots independent short films & mini features through the year. He believes that a short film is a potent medium that speaks a global language. Naren taps fresh talent in all fields – be it acting, cinematography, editing or post work. This belief manifests in the clutch of awards he’s won for his advertising as well as his short film work. Most actors and technicians are willing to throw themselves into these projects. The One Show Pencil (Silver) in 2002 and a Clio Finalist in 2001 are his early shining stars, but perhaps the award that Naren is still nostalgic about is the 2000 IIFA Best Director Award. Right from his first short film ‘Mind Game’, Naren has been experimenting with psychological leaps. It’s the blurred boundaries between ‘Absolute Good’ and ‘Absolute Evil’ that catch his attention. In ‘Mind Game’ he used an enigmatic editing and post production technique to show people having phone conversations with an increasingly irritated God. The film was shortlisted in several major short film festivals. God became a subject that Naren felt the need to do more with. Thus was born the ‘Mind Game’ trilogy. In 2006, his short film ‘Nine Minutes to Nirvana’ was a 9-minute dialogue between man and God. Here, God is a woman dressed in a sarong, brilliantly sun-kissed and sun bathing on a beach at Goa. Conversational, spontaneous, delivered in a single take, the film picked up the Best Actor honour in the New York Short Film Festival. The film also won the Best Film award at the Barcelona Film Festival 2006. With the 2007 mini-feature, ‘Newsstand In Heaven’, the God trilogy was completed. A British girl still nursing the wounds of a break-up, escapes to Goa, only to fall in love with God. A realization that disturbs her, but also makes her wonder what will happen if God stopped caring for a billion beings to be with just one human he loved. Edited entirely with still images the film won Best Cinematography in Brussels and bagged other honours in Paris and Barcelona. The film evoked sharp responses from hypnotized audiences, and was especially loved for its treatment. Perhaps his darkest subject so far, ‘The Waif’ (2008) is a short film about the trauma a child faces after sexual abuse. Setting out to make a visceral impact on audiences, Naren, always looking for credible locations, used a guerilla technique to make the film more gritty and authentic. A tortured soul walks through the hot, busy streets of Mumbai with a human hand clutching his genitals. His face is a diary of shame, guilt and a life-long misery. The actor was let loose in a busy market place, with the propped hand, and people’s reactions were caught on camera. The film won big in Paris and Barcelona, with nominations at various in London and Brussels. The early films (including his early short films ‘Dead End’ and ‘The Last Minute’) have been showcased to a diverse global audience - New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles film festivals as well as the Spiritual Film Festival and the Lausanne Underground film festival. His latest venture is a film that deals with the universal puzzle of marriage. ‘Who the hell thought of this idea called marriage?’ is a one-hour docu-drama made for the highly experimental Times Group in India. The film takes a look at the usual patterns in a marriage and the eventual discord that develops. A spiritual guru helps us understand the reason why marriage is such a misunderstood concept. Though a commercially backed venture, Naren employed unknown actors to raise authenticity and used visual minimalism to keep the subject matter in focus. A DVD release, the film has entered the best-seller lists in many outlets in India. Naren loves making films that shock, surprise, puzzle and generate extreme reactions. He has an obsessiveness to continue to doing work that breaks film grammar and transcends regional borders in sharing experiences and the good old art of storytelling. The one mantra he believes and shares with everyone – “Simple. Don’t follow the rules.”
NAREN MULTANI
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CREATIVE IDEAS
