Frontline presents Shilpa Ranade’s animated shorts Mani’s Dying and Naja Goes to School as significant contributions to India’s emerging animation tradition, which the publication notes is still developing compared to established centers in Canada, Eastern Europe, and Japan. According to Frontline, Mani’s Dying, a seven-minute 1995 film, gained international attention after receiving a commendation from the critics’ jury at the 1996 Mumbai International Film Festival and winning the best student film prize at the British Short Film Festival. The film, based on an excerpt from Bhalchandra Nemade’s Marathi novel Kosala, depicts a young man’s grief over his sister’s death in a smallpox epidemic, using crayons, pencils, and photographs to explore themes of loss and patriarchal neglect. Frontline describes the unrealized red sari promised to the deceased girl as a central metaphor for her cut-short life, while the film’s conclusion at the Ajanta cave monastery illustrates the protagonist’s reconciliation with suffering through Buddhist imagery.
The publication highlights Ranade’s academic background, including an MPhil from the Royal College of Art in London and a master’s degree from the Industrial Design Centre at IIT Bombay, as foundational to her experimental approach. She previously lectured at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay during the early 1990s. Frontline also examines Naja Goes to School, a five-minute watercolor film commissioned by Channel 4, which adapts an excerpt from the autobiography of Dalit writer Shantabai Kamble. This work focuses on a twelve-year-old girl’s removal from school, critiquing societal attitudes toward female education in remote areas. The publication argues that both films address the vulnerability of girls within patriarchal structures, contrasting the routine mourning of a daughter’s death with the potential grief over a son’s loss.
Frontline notes that while opportunities for animators in India remain limited, institutions like the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad are helping to foster growth in the field. The writer, Vidyarthy Chatterjee, frames Ranade’s work as a vehicle for confronting social issues often overlooked in mainstream Indian cinema. The analysis suggests that despite financial challenges, the process of building a solid tradition in serious animation filmmaking has begun, with Ranade’s work serving as a trendsetter for other young filmmakers.