Varun Trikha’s DocedgeKolkata pitch for his project Shape of Silence centres around congenitally blind wildlife sound recordist Izabela who has spent 15 years listening and engaging with the forests of Poland.
However, with the bio-acoustics of the region under threat from various forms of urban developments, the Gdańsk-based recordist hopes to curate a fresh archive of sounds, intending to devise therapeutic sound therapy treatment for disabled, terminally-ill and abandoned children.
The documentary narrative will follow Izabela’s attempts at recording two cathartic sounds from her childhood – the music of agile gibbons and the infrasound communication between elephants – by travelling through the remote rainforests of Malaysia and India. Izabela recognises these as key sonic memories from her early childhood, a period of great personal significance.
However, the project looks at the subject through a poetic lens as it explores the multi-dimensional journey of Izabela, her perspectives of the world, her personal struggles and symptomatic aspirations to contribute to the betterment of others.
A behind-the-scenes interview with the filmmaker opens with a character sketch of his protagonist. He describes her early life, spotlighting her unconditional care for forest beings, birds, and animals. “She lives on the edge of a city with a blind cat, her mother and several rescued birds. Most of these birds are critically ill. Some do not even have wings or toes, but they have Izabela, who knows everything that goes on with them.”
In the project trailer, Trikha provides a soft insight into Izabela’s fieldwork, where she equips a concave parabolic dish — standing with it for hours — to capture the low frequency sounds in forests. “She also installs microphones all over the forest and collects them later,” Trikha elaborates on her techniques. “This is story about her journey of looking for such sounds to bring peace and comfort to others.”
Varun clarifies that the narrative does not seek to amplify Izabela’s disability, but hopes to treat her like any other abled individual. “The portrayal of disabled people in cinema is often one dimensional, aiding many misconceptions about what blind people are like, what they are able to do and what they’re not able to do. With this film, I want to film her as a person with autonomy, with emotional depth, with all her struggles and joys, with all her vulnerabilities as well.”
It is clear, even as a spectator, that there is a consistent effort to create a visual-scape that dovetails with Izabela’s perspective of her world. The cinematography appears lyrical, poetic, mystical, yet solidifying, while, the soundscapes capture raw sounds of the wild.
“Initially when I used to go to a forest with her, I noticed that what was silence to me was music for her. Then, silence came with sounds that were undetectable to me. After spending considerable time with her, now I hear what earlier I could not recognise!” Varun shares a personal anecdote. “With this film I wish to create a cinematic experience of discovering a world that usually goes undetected or unseen.”
Concerning the on-screen narrative, “we will not see any animals in the film as Izabela cannot see animals – she experiences them,” he points out. “We’ll create the experience maybe through mirages, through reflections or quick moments to create a very experiential space.”
So far, Trikha has flawlessly managed to show examples of such integrations in his trailer, where B-roll pans or Izabela’s recording journey overlap with infrastructural development in the distance, suggesting a shrinking forest cover.
With high ambitions, Trikha also aims to further bridge the gap between Izabela’s narrative and the audience’s perspective. He acknowledges that though his protagonist is blind, most of his viewers will not be. Yet, through careful creation of experiences and delicate storytelling, he strives to spotlight common vulnerabilities, such as ecological devastation, that are shared by both.
“Through Iza’s story, we get a very personalised and kind response to ecological changes. That’s something that I think should speak to everybody.” He adds, “She responds to changes in her life with strength and kindness, and this is something that I would like viewers to take away from this experience, really.”
Trikha shares that the project is still in development, with filming in Poland, Malaysia and India already undertaken, and that the team is gearing up for travel to Peru in the near future to explore Izabela’s curiosity-led quest further.
Furthermore, the filmmaker has taken onboard an unnamed Montreal-based sound recordist and an Estonia-based sound designer to build the “uncompromising” soundscape. He is presently on the lookout for a stylistically compatible film crew to build the project further.
Trikha is still raising finance for the project which he hopes to complete by late 2027.
