Backstage, a film on the life and struggles of Odisha’s puppeteers

Lipika Singh Darai’s Backstage will be screened at four film festivals

Odisha’s lone woman filmmaker Lipika Singh Darai is in the news again. The four-time National Award winner’s latest film Backstage, on Odisha’s fading forms of puppetry, has been chosen for four major international film festivals in Italy, the U.S., Taiwan and India.

The 85-minute documentary, produced by the Films Division, premiered last August at the 39th Asolo Art Film Festival in Italy. It portrays the life and struggles of the puppeteers of Odisha, the only State where all four forms of puppetry — glove, string, rod, and shadow — are practised.

Backstage, according to Lipika, is not just the story of the puppeteers, it echoes the emotions of folk artistes from around the country who are fighting to save their craft. The filmmaker spent nine years researching and documenting the life of the puppeteers. “It is not easy to capture an art in its entirety on camera unless you get to know every aspect of the tradition and culture it is part of,” she says.