A still from the film

Crumbling buildings, crumbling people, forgotten pasts.

Bhultir Khero (Chronicle Of An Amnesiac), directed by Anirban Datta and screened at Studio 21 recently, deals with the city and its denizens in the era of malls and multiplexes, while the old city fades.

The award-winning 30-minute short is a visual play of this contrast. Cinematographer Amlan Datta’s camera snakes through north Calcutta’s alleys, a perfect backdrop for the narrative of a 92-year-old freedom fighter.

The film captures the shine on the restored residence of Swami Vivekananda, as much as the grime and the gaping, plaster-less, dissolving walls of the decrepit Simla House, once known as the residence of WC Bonnerjea, the first president of the Indian National Congress.

The ambient music by Pradip Chatterjee, Moheen founder Gautam Chattopadhyay’s brother, adds to the frame-by-frame narrative, which flows as a series of images captured on film by the Datta brothers, both SRFTI graduates.

More painful than the sense of losing a time and place is the feeling that no one remembers those times anymore. We prefer to be amnesiacs in order to keep our temporary comforts and joys in place. Conscience doesn’t have much of a chance if you keep forgetting.