Studio Durga, first Indian anime studio, has very recently won three awards at the Independent Shorts Awards (ISA), based in Los Angeles for their independent anime project, Karmachakra.
Studio Durga submitted the Karmachakra pilot (first 20 minutes of the upcoming feature film) in three categories – Best Animation Short, Best Web Series/TV Pilot and Best Original Score. After getting an official selection in all three of them, they won the Platinum (first prize) for the Best Animation Short category, and Honorable mentions for the rest two categories.
Elated on the win, Studio Durga founder and CEO Rajorshi Basu, who’s also the director of Karmachakra shared with us, “We are truly honoured to have been awarded the Platinum (first prize) for the Best Animation Short and Honorable mentions for the other two categories. It was a real emotional moment for us, this being our first award, and a huge victory for our fans who were happy that ‘Indian anime’ is being recognised more and more. We will continuously submit our work to many festivals across the year, in hope that more people will watch our content and possibly see commercial potential in it.”
The pilot episode of Karmachakra, on Studio Durga’s YouTube page has garnered more than 26,380 views till date and 3.7k likes. Since Karmachakra saw the light of the day, Studio Durga has been basking in applause and appreciation for their commendable work in creating the first independent Indian anime. The Studio Durga team is also looking for opportunities for screening the film and has completed a major chunk of the film.
IMDb qualifier’s Independent Shorts Awards (ISA) is an international film festival, with monthly live screenings and an annual live screening and awards event in Hollywood, CA. Each season, the submitted projects are judged by a random team of invited experts from academia and film industry, against a high standard of merit. The monthly winners are automatically qualified to compete and be screened at ISA annual events. Some of them are invited to be screened at the monthly events.
Karmachakra is expected to be wrapped up by mid 2020.
Unfortunately, veteran Bengali actor, Santu Mukherjee, who lended his voice for Professor Sid in Karmachakra, passed away on 11 March 2020.