‘Putham Pudhu Kaalai’ is one of the latest Tamil Anthologies which Amazon Prime Video has been working on and the five short film summation is set to release tomorrow on 16th October 2020. A couple of days ago, writer-actor-director for one of the short films from the anthology, Suhasini Maniratnam gave an interview on the inception of her story and here is what we have found out.
This film will be Suhasini Maniratnam’s return to directing a feature film, after over 25 years of hiatus. She has worked as a cinematographer, dialogue writer, camera assistant and voice actor for various other films besides being an actor during her nearly 40 year career spanning in the film industry. She has been part of various small-scale projects over the years, and has scripted, acted and directed in several of those.
During the first initial announcement of the 21-day lockdown by PM Modi, she was live streaming a series on Instagram for her NGO, NAAM (Us in Tamil), called NAAM CALM – a podcast on how to stay calm during the lockdown. After the 21 days, the lockdown didn’t end there, as we all know; it went on for a few more months. She then started writing many short stories on various topics and genres during this free time.
When Amazon came to her for short films, she pitched two ideas for a short film, and eventually the family themed short-story titled ‘Coffee Anyone?’ was selected for the anthology series. With the ongoing restrictions in lockdown, she decided to create a short film with only her family as the entire cast featuring her cousins Shruti Haasan and Anu Hasan, her mother Komalam Charuhasan and her father Charuhasan. Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be, as her father Charuhasan had a collarbone injury and wasn’t available for the shoot. The venerable Kathadi Ramamurthy then joined the cast, replacing her father, and there was no looking back.
‘Putham Pudhu Kaalai’, as mentioned earlier, is set to feature on Amazon Prime Video on 16th October 2020.
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