Manpasand—the first animation film using the Sanjhi (stencil) art form, tells how one can ‘visualise’ one’s perfect partner

The 11-minute documentary film Manpasand: The Perfect Match, produced by the Children’s Film Society of India and directed by Dhwani Desai, has won many accolades for India. It bagged a medal at the New York International film festival and was also screened in countries including the Czech Republic, Canada, China, Greece, Turkey, Germany and Poland

This film depicts a 17 th century old Indian art form called Sanjhi (an ancient Vaishnavite art, which involves cutting paper to form intricate stencils depicting the life of Krishna and Radha).The story of the movie is based on the Panchantantra.

Dhwani says, “Sanjhi is a Vaishnavite (followers of Lord Krishna) art and was very popular in places like Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Back then unmarried women would make an image of their desired life partner and let the art work float in a river, with the belief that their request would reach God.”

Dhwani adds, “The making of Sanjhi art pieces were taught by grandmothers to their granddaughters. Practising this art is a type of creative visualisation. It helps in developing mind power.”

It wasn’t easy for Dhwani to create her animated characters in this art form. As this is a dying technique, after travelling all the way to Mathura, Dhwani found a few artists who still practised it. Also, adapting the animation program to Sanjhi art was a challenging task.

Dhwani narrates the story of her struggle, “It took me two years to complete Manpasand. There were about 42 two artists working on this project.” She adds, “We had to create separate libraries of Sanjhi images of different types of trees, animal houses and human characters.”

After much trial and error Dhwani and her team managed to create the world, which they had visualised for the film.