What is time? Do we need it? How do we feel about it? Is it tangible? Can we live without it? A beggar stands waiting in the street stretching out an empty can towards the passers by and with a board hanged around his neck reading: ‘brother, can you spare a minute’. ‘ Time is money’, the beggar says. Who would actually be more entitled and more understanding about this but a beggar indeed who just waits for money.
Ninaad Kulkarni’s short animated film ‘KCLOC‘ is really impressive. With a complex theme like time it is hard to imagine how one could impress unless they go really epic and mystical in the sci-fi kind of way. And still, Ninaad Kulkarni’s film is very simple and humane. Conceptualised under the shape of an animated documentary grouping together interviews from a series of ‘clock-headed’ people, KCLOC is a unique cinematic appearance. Details are important for the young filmmaker as his imagination matches each typology and human archetype to a very distinctive looking ‘clock-head’.
The bohemian, the erudite professor, the child, the cosmopolitan woman and many others have their own perception about the matter. Time is either haunting like a ghost terrifying and leaving the impression that it is stealing from us, or it is a limitation that conditions us, it is relative and it is cruel, it measures the sun movements, it’s a phenomenon putting and keeping everything in motion, we need it for the things we do; it quantifies emotion, it is confusing and uncontrollable and it is a gage for our mortality.
Ninaad Kulkarni’s film happens in just 2 and a half minutes. Quite a time we’d say for the amount of things and ideas that get communicated. The amount and degree of profoundness the director manages to compress in his film concept is unique. It even feels that the animation is getting allegorical here and there putting the human simplicity face to face with eternity and showing our futile attempts to ‘conquer’ it and split it into infinite pieces matching our existence each at a time and giving them sense in accordance to our own understanding of life. ‘KCLOC’ is a must see!
TMFF RATING:
