15 SECONDS A LIFETIME

Mayur Natekar, a hip young adult discovers the TikTok app and gets obsessed with it. Seeing others who have prospered in life, he aspires to achieve something, no matter the cost. Mayur, his brother, mother and father dream of escaping their reality through Mayur's plan of becoming a star.

DIVYA KHARNARE

Divya Kharnare is a young graduate in mass communication who has represented India at the Thailand International Film Destination Festival 2019 as a Writer, Director, Editor. He is currently working on feature length documentaries '15 Seconds A Lifetime' 'Letters To My Grandma' & 'Mahalle's School- Family Going Live' as an Editor, Cinematographer, Creative Writer, Producer and Director. 
Mahalle's School (A short documentary) has been selected at IDFA, UNICEF Innocenti Film Festival and Dharamshala International Film Festival. Recently, he received the 'DOCAVIV Award - Doc Edge Kolkata 2021' and 'DOC NYC Storytelling Incubator' for his work-in- progress film 'Letters To My Grandma'. '15 Seconds A Lifetime' marks his debut for a feature length documentary.

"Art is a privilege which not everyone is able to or wants to afford." 

I have been active on what are perceived as elite social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat. I had immediately dismissed the content of TikTok as 'cringeworthy' because it didn't appeal to me as ‘art’ or something valuable. It was just a mere ‘time-pass’ for many including me until I met the protagonist of our film Mayur Natekar. 

Then, I questioned myself on why I had earlier judged the content on TikTok as 'cringeworthy'. One of the primary reasons was that the content creators featured on TikTok were people from a different strata, class and community who often didn’t have a platform to let out and showcase their talent. As I started making the film with Mayur, I discovered that through this app they all were unabashedly making what they wanted. It was their content, their style and they were putting themselves out there for the world to see which till now not many had the opportunity.

The fact that some of these young boys and girls had hopes of becoming stars through their mobile phones and wanted to lead their lives full of privileges fascinated me. The film also became my window to understand the socio-political division of our society which had been created through just a social media app.

Through this film, I have tried to explore and understand the current state of the youth of our nation and my privilege, the dignified choice that I have of making this art with a camera and laptop, not a mobile phone.

• New York Indian Film Festival, USA
• Cine Pobre Film Festival, Mexico

Doker 2022 — Let IT dok!