A particularly oblique sense of humour marks Sunil Raj’s Metancherry - a graphic animation, one among the huge package of animation films at the 17th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK). The protagonist of the 28-minute film, modelled on the animator himself, is on a trip to explore Mattancherry. Inside his hotel room, apparently in a nod to the town’s Portuguese past, he conjures up two famous Portugal nationals from different eras in his Virtual Reality (VR) glass.
In front of him are Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama and footballer Cristiano Ronaldo. The narrator introduces Gama as “the other Portuguese forward”, using that bit of inventive sports humour to refer to Gama’s fame as the first European to set foot on these shores. Later, when the narrator visits the Saint Francis Church in Kochi, where Gama was originally buried before his remains were relocated to Lisbon, he says, “Oh! boneless tomb”, making it sound similar to boneless chicken. Ask Sunil about that style of humour sprinkled all over the narrative, he attributes it to his admiration for VKN, one of the masters of satire in Malayalam literature.
