Life in Color

“Life in Color” is a dramatic short film about an aging, closeted gay man’s struggle with Alzheimer’s as he attempts to hold on to the memory of his long lost lover. Today, many of the gay men who faced the stigmas of the AIDS Crisis in the early 1980s have reached or will soon reach an age at which they will more likely than not encounter forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. Using this as the key point of inspiration, our team, led by co-writer and director, Bishal Dutta, prioritized “immersion” as the key creative motivation underlying this film; we wanted to place the audience directly in the warped, tragic perspective of Harold, our protagonist.

To accomplish this, we utilized subjective camera angles, a variety of lens choices that subtly marked not only the passage of time, but also the clarity and lack thereof in Harold’s point-of-view. “Life in Color” weaves in and out of both past and present, and our team found visual and auditory ways to create a fluid temporal experience. A soundtrack made up of diverse analogue instruments, including harmonicas and woodwinds, as well as an immersive surround sound experience contribute to a “Life in Color’s” ability to take the audience directly into the mind of a closeted man fighting dementia. “Life in Color” has been a major success for Bridge the Divide Media, reaching festivals as diverse and prestigious as the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and the Vienna Independent Film Festival. It will premiere on Amazon Prime in early 2019.