Short film a family affair

When he is not behind the books at university, up-and-coming filmmaker Radheya Jegatheva is in his room creating award-winning animations. Jegatheva’s fifth film, The Quiet, is screening Australia-wide as part of this year’s short film festival Flickerfest. The Quiet was directed, animated, edited, co-written and scored by the third year Curtin University student, who is studying a Bachelor of Arts in screen arts and commerce. The film was produced, co-written and narrated by Jegatheva’s father, Jay Jay Jegathesan. The Quiet is a stylised, hand-drawn, animated short film about an astronaut in space coming upon a startling self-realisation. The film’s success started at the New Mexico Route 66 Film Festival in the US in September, when it won the best of fest award out of 50 entries. At last Friday night’s Best of Australian screening at the Thornton Theatre, the audience had the chance to meet the young filmmaker. Jegatheva said a lot of his ideas came to him when he least expected it. “A lot of my ideas came through procrastination from uni work,” he said. “I would just slowly accumulate ideas and I never knew what the final result was going to be ... the plot elements kept evolving.” Mr Jegatheva said it took about a year to make the film from its inception to the finished product. The film was created with animation software and other editing programs available to the average computer-savvy person. The script for The Quiet was developed from Jegatheva’s short story Silence, which begins, “Silence is the most beautiful thing that exists in the Universe.” Narrated in his father’s Hitchcock-style voice, the film captivated the audience for the entirety of its 10-minute running time.