Layered paper-cut
Cut-card layers for the office Diwali: Ganesh, the photo frame and a diya are laid on a cream wall like paper cut-outs, while a desk of diyas and plants and a skyline at dusk glide past in parallax.
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Cutting shapes from paper is one of the oldest decorative crafts, from the Sanjhi stencils of Mathura to Chinese jianzhi and Mexican papel picado. Layered paper-cut is its modern studio form: an artist cuts each shape by hand with a scalpel from sheets of matte coloured card, then stacks the layers, sometimes with small spacers between them, so that each sheet throws a fine shadow on the one below. A few colours, clean edges and plenty of empty space give the picture its depth.
In this film an office at Diwali is built from cut card: a cream wall, a window onto a skyline at dusk, and a shelf with diyas, plants and a box of sweets. Ganesh, the photo frame and a diya are laid on the wall one by one like cut cards, and the shelf and the skyline glide past at different speeds, as layers of paper do when the camera moves. The artwork is drawn in the layered paper-cut style for this film; it is not cut by hand.
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