MoaM (Memories of a Machine) bags another award at the Bengaluru international short film festival 2017 after the best film in Paris short film competition.Memories of a machine is also going to be screened at the Durban LGBT film festival, South Africa 2017.
Shailaja Padindala is working on an Independant feature, the title of the film will be out this month.
Memories of a Machine, a Malayalam short film by Shailaja Padindala featuring actress Kani Kusruti, was that most people would dismiss instinctively it as unbelievable. In it, a woman narrates her first sexual experience to her husband who is shooting a home video of sorts. She explains that she was eight years old when she was touched on the vagina by an attendant in school, and when her husband asks whether she thinks that it was wrong, she says: “I don’t want to say ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but it’s not wrong.” Because it was reciprocated — she enjoyed being touched and the man stopped when she asked him to.
The film is creating ripples on the internet: it’s gone viral on YouTube, and reportedly received a great response at its premiere at the Bangalore Queer Film Festival this year. But it has also been heavily criticised for ‘normalising child abuse’. Public intellectuals like author NS Madhavan have praised aspects of the film, but say it pardons paedophilia and should be taken off YouTube. Padindala’s response has been to deny that the film romanticises or condones child abuse: that is why in the film the man tells the woman, “Don’t tell this to a paedophile”.
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