Student Academy Awards Series Part 3: bonVoyage pour monVoyage - Akshit Kumar

bonVoyage pour monVoyage, dir. Akshit Kumar

A Student Academy Award winner in the Alternative/Experimental category is Akshit Kumar’s animated travelogue bonVoyage pour monVoyage. Kumar, a storyteller from Patna, India, is in his final year at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, and developed bonVoyage pour monVoyage for his final project in the Animation Filmmaking program. “From the pages of my journal…” reads the opening epigraph of bonVoyage pour monVoyage, an idea that Kumar has decided to take literally. In every frame of his witty layout, each image has a gutter down the middle and a page on either side, as if the animations were literally bound in a book of his thoughts.

A low rumbling of trains sets the scene for Kumar’s witty and adventurous film. bonVoyage pour monVoyage begins largely with still images, some of smiling families and tourist attractions, grouped together with labeled diagrams of food, drawn maps and travel itineraries filling the screen with ephemera from a voyage across India. The rich sound design draws us into the scene, with overlapping voices of people talking, mixed with cars honking and birds chirping, a vibrant city scene. As an avid traveler, Kumar enjoys narrating the stories he encounters and is particularly passionate about traditional Indian arts, which he incorporates into his storytelling. The initially simple black and white drawings that clutter Kumar’s pages begin to be filled in with colourful patterns, making the animation progressively bigger and brighter.

Kumar is particularly interested in experimental animation filmmaking, often looking around to find new ways of animating, this mix of new and old animation styles reflecting the cultural diversity Kumar saw in his journeys. He gathers all of these elements together and combines them in ever more unexpected ways; first, photos of his family and their sightseeing are embellished by scintillating Indian patterns, later animated characters crawl through video and photo backgrounds. Each of these surprising reveals show a new and thoughtful technique—one whip pan across a still image is an especially delightful touch.

As bonVoyage pour monVoyage goes on, it becomes an increasingly ambitious collage, with different mixes of media drawing unexpected lines between its sources; like how the sound of camera shutter flashes on hand-drawn images, or when swinging bus handles are drawn on top of a page full of travel tickets, the medium meeting the message in the middle of the crowded page. Later, real footage of waves crashing over a drawn background then take over the screen, later a photoreal background has an animated character climbing up its mountainous hillside.

bonVoyage pour monVoyage is an incredibly personal film for Kumar (the credits thanks his family), and we are lucky to be able to take this small part in his travel adventures around India. The only downside of the moving and evocative film is that the five-minute runtime is so short it feels like it ends just as it is getting started. But here is hoping that we are able to see many more of Kumar’s animated adventures in the future; this bright talent is at the beginning of what is sure to be a fruitful career.

Review by: Joshua Hunt