“Through the lens you can capture the current moment and replay; there is a moral responsibility of what you see, capture and share,” says Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan, Director and Producer of the multilingual suspense thriller, Lens , explaining the title of his film.
In an age where social networking has captured the mass urban psyche, Lens comes as a dark reminder of the power it holds in breaking lives when misused. It is a gripping tale of how a passing act of voyeurism on the internet by the protagonist, Aravind, played by Jayaprakash, turns his life for the worse when asked by a stranger to watch him, as he ends his life before his Skype cam.
The movie, mostly shot in Jayaprakash’s house and in a few locations in Munnar is a low budget film, distributed by veteran filmmaker Lal Jose under the LJ Films Pvt Lt. The film has won him the Gollapudi Srinivas Award, which is given every year for the best debut film director. “I was extremely honoured and happy to have won the award…it’s one of those feelings you cannot explain with words,” says Jayaprakash.
Hailing from Palakkad, Jayaprakash quit his job as a software engineer in the United States and returned home in 2006 to pursue his lifelong passion for acting. He appeared in Tamil movies like Inba , Muran and Yennai Arindhaal and in the 2011 Malayalam movie Urmi . “I wanted to become an actor but I didn’t get many chances then. That led me to develop an interest and study about script writing and wanted to gain knowledge about the field.”
The screenplay of Lens was written by Jayaprakash and was completed in two years. The idea of the film occurred to him during a Skype conversation with his friend in America, who asked in jest, “how would you react if I die in front of you now?” “That was how the idea came to me. Later while searching for a theme to develop the idea, I came across the Amanda suicide video”.
In a video taken just weeks before she took her own life, Canadian teenager Amanda Todd described her experiences of being bullied online and physically assaulted after a webcam video where she was blackmailed to expose her breasts went viral. This suicide video of Todd received attention from the international media after her death in October 2012. “The video she posted made me very emotional. Right then I knew I got the theme for my movie.”
With Lal Jose backing the film in its promotion and praising it to be an “edge of seat, thriller movie”, the film has captured the attention of film goers. It is also being received well among the critics, with filmmakers like Vineeth Srinivasan saying, “This film needs to be seen by today’s’ internet savvy generation. It’s relevant, gritty, honest and it haunts.”
The film has been screened in number film festivals like the Chennai, Pune and Bengaluru International Film Festivals. The film was also nominated for the Best Writer Award in the Bioscope Global Film Festival, Delhi. “I wanted to release the film all over India and we will soon be taking it to Chennai, Bangalore and the north, because people there are waiting. Since its screening in the film festivals, especially in Pune, everyone had been enquiring about the movie’s release”.
The film’s cinematography had been handled by S. R. Kathir and the background score is by Siddharth Vipin who is co-producer. Veteran Tamil theatre artist, Anand Sami plays the role of Yohan in the movie.
