Rustam Mazumdar

Rustam Mazumdar is a filmmaker, with a post-graduate Diploma in Creative Documentary Filmmaking from Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts and Communication. Through this project, he intends to explore the history of violence in the context of the internet, and how it impacts violent behaviour in a person.

The internet as a medium provides a wide range of information and stimulus at a speed which has significant ramifications on how one’s psyche processes and rationalises that, often robbing one of the time and ability to ruminate on meanings. For Rustam’s generation, the internet provided unfettered access to this as children in the 90s and has led to an increased level of engagement with the medium in professional and personal lives in their adulthood. His research will look at the impact of this on violent human behaviour. From aspects of masculinity, shame and insecurity, to development of maladaptive schemas during pre-adolescence leading to abuse and toxic relationship dynamics, his project will attempt to understand the psychodynamics of violence. It will explore the internet’s effect on brain function, psychological reasoning, and the subconscious mind, as well as the kind of identities it perpetuates, and ways in which it affects the nature of relationships between an individual and the ‘other’. It will further examine how we perceive violence itself as well as a violent human being.

Citing Off the Air, a series of experimental animation pieces by animator Dave Hughes as inspiration for the form, Rustam envisions the outcome to be a collection of montages like an audiovisual medley. He plans to use archival footage, basic animation, stop motion cinema, live-action, etc all intercutting each other, with audio in the background. He plans to employ techniques such as rotoscoping on clips he films, in order to enhance the immersion of the viewer. He does not plan using text, but he may use newspaper headlines in script development.

The outcome of this grant and the Grantee’s deliverables to IFA will be this audiovisual montage.

This grant is made possible under the special initiative 25x25, with support from lead donor Kshirsagar-Apte Foundation, and philanthropy partners, Titan Company Limited, Priya Paul, and Sethu Vaidyanathan.