In a video message, Shahabuddin has requested all to donate as little as Tk 10, which will be used to film ‘High Tunes, Bangladesh DNA’ by French filmmaker Isabelle Antunès.
“The role of artists, such as me and director Isabelle is to portray the realities of life and bring a positive change in people and society,” the master painter added.
“We saw Satyajit Ray make several films with minimal funds, such as Pather Panchali, which had taken the world by storm. Real artists who are immensely talented and strive to bring about that positive change often fall short of accumulating the funds required to make a film. If everyone contributes Tk 10 each that would help a lot,” he said.
Shahabuddin said Isabelle loves Bangladesh. She has been to Africa, Indonesia and many other countries but she fell in love with Bangladesh and now wants to show the world its beauty.
Isabelle, who first visited Bangladesh in 2011, came to love everything about Bangladesh – its people, culture, natural beauty and such.
This is going to be Isabelle's second movie on Bangladesh. Her first film on Bangladesh was ‘Happy Rain’, an inspiring story about the development of fish farming in the flooded rice paddies during monsoon or portraying how thousands of farmers turned the floods into fish farm venture and changed their lives. The film was shown at the United Nations COP21 conference on climate change and on French Television in December 2015. Happy Rain won an award at Ekotop Film Festival in 2016 and qn azqrd qt IOFF Festival that same year.
“As I began to learn more about the culture, I discovered a profoundly artistic country where music and singing are the DNA of its people,” Isabelle observed, “So, I began to explore the work of architects, artists and musicians to see how their work is inspired today by Bangladeshi philosophers, poets and musicians. There was a high tune, resolutely modern and courageous, a tune connecting people.”
She decided to crowdfund the film by demonstrating the high demand for positive films portraying a good image of our humanity and progress because it seems essential in today's world and the dominant narratives that this High Tunes to be carried by a movement that will inspire and in turn encourage other filmmakers from all over the world to echo Bangladesh with their good stories because good stories can connect people.
More information about the film and procedure to contribute can be found at http://hightunes-thefilm.com.
Filming will take place in Dhaka and rural Bangladesh, while post-production will be done in Paris.
According to the filmmaker’s schedule, the post-production of the film will be completed by April 2019, just in time to showcase it at the Cannes Film Festival later in May.
French producing house, La fabrique du géographe is partnering with Cosmos Foundation and PayWell to make this pioneering movement a success.