There's a treasure trove of short films out there. How to find them

Veer Arjun Singh carefully navigates YouTube to find a treasure trove of short films

I am through with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar. I have consumed the good stuff on Tubi, Plex and Pluto, and even gone through my parents’ wedding DVD. I am happy to announce I finally finished Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’s The Communist Manifesto, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It wasn’t such a big deal. All it took was a pair of noise-cancelling earphones and an hour each while doing the dishes for 20 days. But it’s time now for something shorter and, perhaps, more meaningful.

I am firmly set on rediscovering YouTube now. And I am privy to its treacherous trails. The unbridled creativity of user-generated content on the platform is one landmine after the other. To get to anything meaningful without a trustworthy recommendation — and these are hard to come by — you must first learn to sidestep the promoted, the advertised, the empty talk and the sleaze. A few thumb rules will help you along the way. For starters, don’t fall for YouTube’s own recommendations, the number of views (even in multiples of millions) means nothing and don’t subscribe to a channel based on just a few videos. Also, if you don’t want the platform to consume you like cocaine and change your worldview in the process, do not click on any bell icon.

These rules apply fully to short films. There are many brilliantly written tidbits of engaging cinema made with a stellar but repetitive starcast that are lost within this streaming metropolis. Unfortunately, I am limiting myself to scoping out the ones closely associated with Bollywood (Hindi audio, English subtitles). Many of the good English and foreign language short films are either not on YouTube or accessing them is an infringement of piracy laws, such as young director Kristóf Deák’s 2016 Hungarian drama Mindenki (Sing). I leave the quest to your ethics and tech creativity.

As for Indian films, the YouTube recommendations will line up as soon as you click on one. It’s imperative, therefore, that you start with a good one. Kahaani director Sujoy Ghosh’s 2015 Bengali short film Ahalya, starring Soumitra Chatterjee and Radhika Apte, is a skilful piece of suspenseful storytelling in under 15 minutes. It’s from Royal Stag Barrel Select Large Short Films, which is a fairly reliable platform for the format. Among their best is another stomach-churning suspense, Jyoti Kapur Das’ 2016 film Chutney starring Tisca Chopra, Adil Hussain and Rasika Dugal. You might want to keep the food away while you watch this one.

For a slightly more psychological bent to suspense, watch Shirish Kunder’s Kriti (2016), starring Manoj Bajpayee and Apte, from Golden Ratio Films.

Neena Gupta and Jackie Shroff in Khujli

Written and directed by 23-year-old Priyanka Banerjee is Devi (2020), a poignant take on crimes against women, led by Kajol among its expansive star cast. It’s an absolute must-watch lest we forget that nature’s self-healing abilities do not apply to a diseased and sadistic society. Offering an anti-fragile punch on the subject is Anurag Kashyap’s That Day After Everyday starring Apte and Geetanjali Thapa in lead roles.

While you can completely skip Chaddi, you must not miss Jackie Shroff and Neena Gupta-starrer Khujli, from Terribly Tiny Tales. The 2017 comedy written and directed by Sonam Nair about an ageing couple discovering BDSM is one of the funniest finds on YouTube among short films. It’s the kind of chemistry between a lead pair that we usually spend close to three hours looking for in a theatre.

A short film is crisp storytelling that does not distinguish between commercial and parallel cinema. Star power here is a spent currency and only the deft and gifted can make an impact in the short time. It takes less time to finish a film than to read its review. It’s a power nap, a pick-me-up snack and a clever piece of entertainment rolled into a single, 15-minute break that fits perfectly between work, chores and more chores. To make it perfectly clear: it’s a treasure trove.