Panaji, Oct 20 (TOI): An Old Dog's Diary, a short film portrait of Goan painter and genius Francis Newton S ouza by Shumona Goel and Shai Heredia, a Goan, has won the Best Short Film Award by the British Film Institute's London Film Festival.

The black and white film by Goel, a Bombay- based experimental filmmaker and installation artist who works with 16mm film, slide projections and VHS to produce low-budget films and film installations and Heredia, a Bangalore-based filmmaker and curator of film art and founder of Experimenta, the international film festival for experimental cinema in India, pays tribute to Souza, a radical young art student who co-founded the Bombay Progressive Artists Group in 1947.

On moving to London and following the success of his first solo show in 1955 at Gallery One, he turned into a widely collected international artist. The film that was shot predominantly in Goa where Souza spent his childhood brings to the fore Souza's letters, writings and drawings that are charged with memories of an unsettled life, Heredia, originally from Diwar, says.

Jury president at BFI London Film Festival, Daisy Jacob said the film was as poetic and soulful as its subject and offered a fresh and original way of documenting the life of an artist. "It looks beautiful, sounds beautiful, but more than that it tells us about the beauty of the human spirit," she said.
Shai told TOI they were excited to recieve the award.

Last month, the film was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film crew included cinematographer Avijit Mukul Kishore, Susmit Nath, Shreyasi Kar and Sagar Shiriskar, Cyriaco Fernandes, Vivek Sachidanandan, Neil Sadwelkar, Nachiket and Swati Jaiswal. The awards were presented by Shezad Dawood and Daisy Jacobs on Saturday evening.

Goel and Heredia's last film 'I am micro' (2012) won prestigious awards, including the national award.