Bipasha Mukherjee

Sense of Place – Sense of Place is an immersive narrative documentary on Marine Drive- a popular promenade by the Arabian Sea in the bustlng city of Mumbai. The film encapsulates the escape that Marine Drive provides to the tourists and Mumbaikars from the hum-drum of the fast city life.

Mumbai, the city that never sleeps. The city where dreams and aspirations are made and broken, the financial capital of the country where every moment rags are turned to riches and riches to rags, a city that makes and sells dreams to the multitudes in multiplexes across the world, is dynamic, cramped and paradoxical. It offers its residents encouragement to dream big and a push to achieve a better life but never the time or space to take a break, halt mid-stride and smell that rose by the wayside, but it does offer the vast sea-side as a reprieve from the confined lives and cramped styles, a space to grieve the failures and regroup, some time to relive the successes and plan ahead.

The Marine Drive is the most famous tourist attraction that Mumbai has to offer. It is a three kilometer promenade by the Arabian Sea constructed as a part of the Bombay urban development plan in the early 20th century. But much more than the tourist attraction, Marine Drive is where Mumbaikars come for a few moments of freedom from the stresses of daily commuting, of high living costs, of cramped homes, of broken dreams, of uncertain futures. It is a place that breathes possibility.

My film is about the Marine Drive and the people who frequent the promenade and share a special connection with it – the families who come there to enjoy the sunset, share some street snacks and chai with each other, the children who finally get some space to run around, the group of friends who just want to unwind after a long day at classes or work, maybe share laughter and vent about authority. The joggers and power walkers in expensive sportswear and the young delinquents in slippers just there to ogle at the passersby. The couples who can hide in the crowds and get a moment of privacy. The grievers who can share their burdens with the sea and have a moment of anonymity.

My intention with this film is to capture these ordinary nuances that make Marine Drive extraordinary. Inspired by Jonathan Hodgson’s Nightclub and Marcus Armitage’s That Yorkshire Sound and My Dad, I have focused on transitions, the textural qualities of oil pastels on paper and fluidity in motion rather than a concrete narrative.

Medium: Oil Pastels and Gouache on paper

In Collaboration with:

Musician

Oliviero Forni is a film and music composer, arranger, songwriter based in London. He's currently studying at the Royal College of Music. He's the lead guitarist in his band, the Wake Up Call.

Animation Assistants

Agnishikha Ray Shenglin Wang

Sound Recording

Saba Mundlay

Medium:

Oil Pastels and Gouache on paper

Size:

1440x1080 (4:3)

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Coloured Pens on Paper

Oil Pastels on paper

Ink on paper

Chinese Ink on paper

Bipasha Mukherjee is a film-maker from the vibrant land of India. Having been brought up in a multicultural environment, her work mostly reflects exploration of various ethnic nuances of the Indian subcontinent. With a fascination for places and people, she delves into the world of her vaguely warped memories. She likes to experiment with styles and she hopes to keep on this journey of exploration

She has a Bachelor's degree in Commerce (Accountancy & Economics). She also holds a distinction in Masters in Design (Animation) from MIT ADT University, Pune, India, where she made her film, My Nethertown (Amar Konnagar), which has been screened at the FLAMES Film Festival, Pune (2018) and the Clapstick International Student's Film Festival hosted by the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata (2019). She has also presented her paper on ‘Comparative Analysis between Worli Art and Egyptian Hieroglyphics’ at the National Conference on Innovation in Visual Arts, 2018 held by the Amity School of Fine Arts, Delhi.

Since then Bipasha has worked at an IT company based in San Francisco, California as a part of their UX design and creative team. She has also worked as an illustrator for an ed-tech company in India.

Bipasha is currently pursuing a Masters in Arts in Narrative Animation at the Royal College of Art to find her voice and ideology as a global artist, filmmaker and storyteller.

I was brought up in a cosmopolitan Nehruvian steel township, a multicultural and multilingual melting pot, where I grew up around people from different cultures and backgrounds. My artistic oeuvre is therefore defined by people and their experiences in life juxtaposed with my own responses to the same. Most of my artwork has been driven by personal experiences and memories that I have collected over the years. My practice is influenced by the people and places that have had a significant impact in my life, positive or negative. I am in the process of finding my purpose as an artist but I intend to keep in touch with my cultural and ethnic roots as the foundation of my practice.

My first film My Nethertown (2017) was a quasi-documentary film about my memories of the summer holidays I spent in my ancestral home with my grandparents and relatives. It was inspired by my mother’s influence on me to learn and tell about my native Bengali roots and culture.

My recent first year short film Narcissus is a tentative exploration of the internal struggles of a narcissist with their own insecurities and complexities.

My current film project is informed by my connection to the Marine Drive, a promenade by the Arabian sea in the city of Mumbai. The film encapsulates the sense of space and time that Marine Drive and the open sea gave me among the teeming multitudes of others, comprising the rooted residents of Mumbai, the floating migrants, the fly-by-night operators, the fleet-footed tourists, and other dream-catchers like me. The vast canvas of the Drive and the sea serves as an escape, a reprieve from the teeming city’s cramped spaces housing the soaring ambitions in constant hand-to-hand combat with the harsh realities.

Although I’ve mostly used 2D digital media in my professional and film-making practice, I’m more drawn to traditional mediums of paint and pencil on paper and canvases for personal still projects. For the Sense of Place, I’ve decided to break out of my comfort and safe zone of digital media, and explore oil pastels and gouache on paper for animating straight ahead.

Bipasha Mukherjee

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Royal College of Art