62 minute featured-documentary “Savoy: Saga of an Icon,” dedicated to the hundred and seventeen year old hotel in the hill-station of Mussoorie is winning accolades, nominations and awards in India and overseas.
The film has won a slew of awards: ‘Platinum Award’ at the Latitude Film Festival, London; ‘Best Documentary’ Award and ‘Best Director’ Award at the Mindfield Film Festival, USA; ‘Best Voiceover’ Award at the Oniros Film Awards, Italy, ‘Best Editing’ at the White Unicorn International Film Festival, Kolkata, ‘Best Editing’ at The Florence Film Awards and also ‘Best Indian Documentary Film’ at the Crownwood International Film Festival held in Kolkatta.
It has been nominated for the Jaipur International Film Festival, India.
Cineddiction Films works as a tight team while shuffling roles. For ‘Savoy:Saga on an Icon’ Kshitij Sharma was the Director, Abhishekh Negi, Cinematographer, Deeya Dey, Production Manager and Bhaskar Sharma at the Sound. For five years now the young team has been making independent films. Collectively their creative work has been screened at more than hundred national and international film festivals, with fifty odd awards to their credit. Recently, Cineddiction Films Films won 34 awards for their recent project, “Devil” (Maupassant’s ‘Le Diable) presently being screened on Amazon Prime.
Savoy: ‘Saga of an Icon’ was shot in August this year, over four days but resting on forty years of research. The film uses sepia-tone images taken over a hundred odd years. Old pictures, sketches and memorabilia from personal collections along with rarely used footage from British Film Institute Library were put to effective use by the filmmaker. ‘The featured-documentary came together because of Producer, Mr. K. K. Kaya whose interest in the project never waned,’ says Ganesh Saili, who anchors the docu-drama.
Director Kshitij Sharma, a regular visitor to the property since his school days, was smitten by the property and his visual ode is a living testimony of his love for the property and its rich history. “I first came to Savoy as a school boy and felt a deep connect with it. I read Mr. Saili’s ‘Mussoorie Medley’ and knew there would be no one better to regale us with stories of Savoy’s past, than someone who has been an inseparable part of this grand property.”
The team hopes that ‘Savoy: Saga of an Icon’ will someday serve as a sort of bookmark in the pages of the hill station’s history as well as the iconic mountain hotel.
