Ian Lumsden
Having purchased a new iPod recently I recognise there is beauty to be found in economy and abridgement. Meghana Bisineer’s six-minute movie, A Journey Across Grandmother, delivers just these qualities. Its story is a touching one, the relationship of an infant girl with her revered, dying grandmother. Events unfold over the summer vacation when the child’s home is full of exuberant older cousins from whose strange games the infant flinches, retreating to the security of her grandmother’s bedroom. She has a close affinity with the old lady, the youngest and the oldest in the family. Even in her last days the woman throws her arms protectively around the child. In turn the girl amuses herself on and around the huge bed and its occupant, retreating into a private world of imagination.
Meghana uses her ink sparingly. The drawings are sketched out in minimal detail, perfectly composed. She eschews colour, musical soundtrack, even, with the barest possible exception, voice. Instead she uses subtitles, pared down to the essential thoughts of the child. The soundtrack is one of sighs, movements and breathing. The animation flickers along with a grainy quality. Our focus is entirely girl and grandmother. It is a refreshing, innocent world where the girl is a tiny speck on a rolling landscape of bed, quilt and adult. Performing cartwheels, blowing bubbles, taking a boat journey, walking with imaginary friends and, ever present, the sound of the old woman’s breathing. When there is silence the granddaughter’s world changes. She waits with her family by a towering telephone, returning up the steps to a room that is very empty.
Meghana has a talent for encompassing the world of the child in a few strokes of her pen: the looming, intimidating forms of the older children, the waves of the sea becoming the hair of the old lady, the clutching hand that lifts the child from the boat into her protective arms, the bubbles that become clouds over the girl’s head. Imaginatively and conceptually the movie allows one the privilege of entering an innocent world of childhood. In our busy civilisation the grandparent has a huge role in the upbringing and support for children. A Journey Across Grandmother pays homage to the woman and, in a sense, the institution.
Born and brought up in Bangalore, India, Meghana obtained her first degree from the National Institute of Design before moving to the UK to obtain a masters degree in animation in 2006 from the celebrated Royal College of Art. A Journey Across Grandmother was Meghana’s graduation degree. She has been commissioned for various collaborative projects for Channel 4 and is currently undertaking research in India for what hopefully will be her next individual film. Her website is well worth a visit and I have written about her work on the www.animationblog.org.