Popular Tamil cinema images get 'artsy' makeover

On 'Silk’ Smitha’s 23rd death anniversary on September 23, her admirers across the country started sharing images of her on social media. One such black and white image of the southern star caught the attention of city-based art enthusiast Charles Britto. It inspired him to create a superimposed image of Smitha with the background of the famous painting Wheat Field with Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh. The picture went viral and the youngster started a project called 'Kalakki', through which he creates mash-ups of popular and rare photographs from Tamil cinema superimposed on world famous paintings.

“I chanced upon this rare photo of Smitha on Twitter and wanted to mash it up with a popular painting. Vincent van Gogh's Wheat Field with Cypresses is a classic work, and I used that as the background for one of Smitha's rare photographs. I posted the image on my social media and within a few hours, it went viral. That was when I started creating mash-ups of photos," recalls Charles.

His idea was to focus on popular iconic images from Tamil cinema. There are Krishnan-Panju's Parasakthi (1952) against Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888), AC Tirulokchandar’s Adhe Kangal (1967) on Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893), MG Ramachandran’s Ulagam Sutrum Valiban (1973) with the backdrop of Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1829–1833), and A Bhimsingh's Kalathur Kannama (1959) along with Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001). 

After completing his engineering, the youngster did his master's in Arts and Aesthetics from JNU in Delhi. He also assisted in direction of a couple of films and also wrote and directed a few plays for the Short+Sweet Theatre Festival. 

"There are many people who do mash-ups, but haven't come across any in relation to Tamil films. Being an arts student and a movie buff, I wanted to create artworks that could redefine the concept behind a painting. There are some great Renaissance painters like Vincent van Gogh, Francis Bacon, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and René Magritte, and their works are beyond explanation. Moreover, every piece of art is interpreted differently," he explains.

His knowledge of contemporary art helped him pick and source the best digital versions of the paintings from open-source domains. "First I choose the images of paintings which have no copyright issues and then look for relevant film images. After I opened pages on social media to display these works, I have been getting requests from people to make them customised artworks," shares Charles. 

Though he says it's tough to pick a favourite, Charles recollects loving creating mash-ups of Parasakthi, KR Vijaya and Adhe Kangal. "The photo of Sivaji Ganesan from the film Parasakthi was tweeted by AVM Productions. Most of the production houses and film photographers will be having such vintage photographs and I wanted to source them. In the future, I am planning to sell merchandises and have been discussing the prospects with one of my close friends,” he remarks.