Alif

A man leaves his house. Another applies for leave in his office. A third finishes his tea. Another gets himself shaved. All four are fresh entrants in the world of crime: kidnapping to be more precise. But the father of the kidnapped boy refuses to pay up. The son has already played this trick before and collected good ransom. The father does not believe this time it is a real thing; The kidnappers get desperate. The son has in idea. The plot thickens.

People are involved in daily encounters without ever being aware of how they are connected with one another. A taxi reveals all.

The film is about a young boy who has just finished graduation and is waiting for the result of a competitive examination. He is quite sure about getting through the examination, but his mother generally grumbles and assumes that her son is not capable of doing anything in this world. Discouraged and fed up with all this, he goes to his college and meets his girlfriend. He does not want to lose these moments. One fine morning he is awakened by the excited voice of his mother informing him that he has been selected in the competitive examination!

Sudhir - staying in a city without family roots - symbolizes the need for commitment in all young, sensitive and thinking individuals all over the world. The family is a fast-disintegrating social institution and Sudhir's Saturday night represents a true 'dolce vita' - without Fellini's irony, but sickly and sweet. The ridiculously elementary encounter with a mother prostitute as well as his final grandiose speech to the little runaway boy lose their power — and induce a facile fulfilment.

Maya is a teenager young girl who is working as a housemaid in a rich family. She is required to do all household work and also look after a small child. She toils from dawn to dusk and cannot get peaceful sleep. She, therefore, wants to get rid of it. One night, she kills the child in the cradle and then, relieved of her burden, quietly sleeps on the ground.

These poor people find that their lives, hopes, desires and even dreams are ruled by the powerful. They are deprived of their natural spontaneity and thought process. As a consequence, the victim's action and reaction is programmed and they are performed mechanically as a ritual. In this film, a family of three falls victim to a middle-aged officer, who controls their lives. The woman is thrown in prison, the man becomes a toy in the hands of the officer and their child looks on innocently.

Shama and Ravi are members of a Marxist party. Shama loves classical Indian music, a luxury of a few, and Ravi is in love with quotations and the philosophy of Marx - a need of the masses. Due to a strike, Ravi is compelled to work full-time for the party. Shama decides to give up music reluctantly and joins Ravi.

In modern society, communication between individuals is becoming more and more difficult. Two persons may be in the same physical environment, yet it seems that a Glass Pane - invisible but strong, and very much there separates these individuals. Almost Antonioniesque in its composition, this short film is a study of a married couple who are unable to communicate with each other.

A girl comes to Karla Caves to meet her lover planning to elope with him. She waits for a long time, but her lover does not turn up. All of a sudden, her attention is drawn towards a massive statue of a male and a female entwined in each other's arms. She feels as if the carved image is conveying the message of the noble relationship between man and woman. As she wanders about in the caves, she realizes that it is shameful and cowardly to run away with her lover. She has been transformed.

Aditya has been suffering from muscular dystrophy since theage of l1. Now 25, he has been in hospital for 2 months. Heis a Former chess champion. In his subconscious mind, heplays chess with Death and keeps defeating him, unaware oflittle time left with him. In the hospital he meets a 12 year oldgirl. Aditya gets the idea of donating his eyes to her after hisdeath. That gives birth to the idea of donating his organswhen he is still alive. He confides this idea to his mother whofirst gets disturbed but then talks about it to the doctors.Doctors refuse it as it would be mercy killing, which is not permissible in India. His mother files the suit to supreme court which gets turned down. Aditya dies few days later, Only his eyes get donated

In the interior of a forest, a tree is being felled. Anordinary event, an event like the shooting of a birdor a rabbit in a forest or the violation of a girl in alonely forest. It is an ordinary human event.. Thefilm humanizes the event of the cutting of a tree ina forest. When one tree is cut (killed, violated) theWOodcutter passes on to the next tree to be cut(killed. violated?

The film looks into the inner layers of the mind and heart of a young man who has loved a girl but has lately developed some sort of misunderstanding with her. Inspite of the youthful love and affection they have had for each other, the girl suddenly refuses to meet him anymore. The boy is at a loss to understand why.

The passage from adolescence to youth is a phase during which a girl emerges in a distinctive period of her life to another significant phase. Most often there is a synchronous transition in her physical state with that of her emotional state of mind. This film poignantly depicts such a transition in a girl's life. Her changing attitudes towards her playmates, and objects around are brought out very vividly in this film.

9-year-old Bittu battles a mysterious fever, an affliction that deepens with an unfamiliar stirring within him as he watches his uncle’s young wife, Kusum, longing for a husband who toils far from home.

The protagonist is a young man staying in a city. He is sensitive, melancholy and a dreamer. He is unable to communicate his feelings to the woman he loves. Everything seems to have been entangled in a mesh, irrespective of these characters. He cannot even differentiate between his capability to love and his passionate desires which have been repressed. That is how he is confused and with his ideals and morality he is living outside his own time and inevitably suffering. His self criticism is endless. He dreams about whatever he lacks and about his ideals. The dreams have led him to the domain of non-communication. His repressed passion along with his self criticism has made him bored with life. Now at every point he expects something exceptional.

The journey of news coming alive, when an athlete featured on the front page falls in love with a tennis starlet featured on the last page of a newspaper.

A man (psychopath), walking around isolated roads at night, encounters a woman who triggers off his childhood memories of torturing and killing a rat, and further leads him to slash another woman - a hooker to death. He has another encounter with the first woman, this time interacting with her - albeit in an unusual manner over a game of SCRABBLE. This leads to passion between the two and... it is the woman who is seen washing up and cleaning the blood off her hands.

A cynical young man and a romantic young womanencountered each other on a night bus journey. Eachspins a story around the other. It turns out that she isgoing to meet someone, she has never seen before. Heis apprehensive. She herself is not so sure.

A short film on the traditional art and craft of making the musical instruments Sitar and Tabla.

FTII Diploma film by Mani Kaul