It is believed that the other senses of  visually impaired are very alert. Cinema is one of those visual medias which have always been out of bounds for the blind. But, this is not true in the case of those who in spite of this handicap are willing to take up challenges.

 Writer Harsha Tijare and director Abhijit K Zanjal are coming up with their new Marathi film ‘Drishtant’. The film is about a group of visually challenged friends who get stranded on an abandoned  island after their boat perishes in a storm.

‘Drishtant’ Marathi Movie

Starring Babita Saroj, Hemendra Pratap Singh, Ratan Dubey and Royston Jholar – all of whom are visually impaired – this film makes a statement about the world of the blind, and underlines how it is different from the world of the sighted. However, the film also leaves the audience with a question, as to, who actually is blind – the visually gifted or the visually challenged ?

 Another highlight of this film is that the  music of the film is composed by the talented Bipin Vartak, a visually impaired composer. The songs are sung by Bipin himself, along with Siddhesh Patil and Naushina Hatodkar – who are visually impaired too. The songs have the flute accompaniment by Kiran Vinkar, who is also a visually challenged but highly gifted flautist from the industry.

 Composer Bipin Vartak is not the first of his kind to compose the songs. We have had composers like Ravindra Jain and Master Sonik (Sonik Omi duo) who have given some memorable songs to music lovers. But what makes this film special is that Bipin Vartak has also done the background score of the film.

When asked as to how he managed to do the background score, which requires to be done as per the visuals of the film, Bipin said, “Music is a language of emotions. And emotions are the same across people, religions, countries and cultures. One does not need to see a sad scene to feel the emotions of an intense solo violin pulling at your heart strings. One just needs to know the sorrow.”

He agrees that a film’s background score does need to support the visuals on the screen, and that is where he reined in the help of his close friend Madhav Vijay. Together, Bipin and Madhav gradually handled this challenge – with Madhav explaining Bipin what is happening on screen and Bipin composing it as per the requirement.

“It was a slow but highly satisfying process. I am happy with the result that we have achieved by our relentless efforts. It was like in the Mahabharat – Madhav played the role of  ‘Sanjay’ who described the scene to me, and we both created the music as per the emotions of the characters. As I said – the emotions are the same, whether sorrow or joy.”

‘Drishtant’ may perhaps be the very first film, where this remarkable experiment has been done where a visually impaired music composer creates the background score for a completely visual medium called Cinema.