INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE
Film Synopsis
দ্বিতীয় তত্ত্ব / The Second Reality is a short experimental film that unfolds through a deceptively simple premise: an ordinary man sets out to prepare a chicken dinner. What begins as a mundane act of everyday routine—buying, cleaning, cooking—gradually transforms into an uncanny confrontation. The man watches the chicken being killed, anticipates the meal with excitement and hunger, and relishes the scent of power and pleasure in the act of consumption. On the surface, The Second Reality tells the story of a man and a meal.
Beneath, it is a metaphorical excavation of human desire, moral blindness, and the psychology of unchecked consumption. In a world where we routinely consume life—be it animals, nature, resources, or each other—without pause or reflection, this film asks: what if the cycle reversed? What if the object of our desire and dominance began to resist us? What if the world we consume started consuming us?
The narrative is deliberately minimal: a man, a chicken, a kitchen. But these elements serve as portals to larger existential questions. The chicken in this film is not just flesh—it is history, ritual, guilt, violence, complicity. The kitchen becomes a stage for performance, domination, and ultimately, inner collapse.
As the director, this film marks my debut in cinema, though it carries forward the thematic and formal language I’ve developed over years of working across literature, theatre, performance, music and sound. My artistic practice is rooted in exploring psychological fragility, philosophical tension, and the unspoken textures of contemporary life. With দ্বিতীয় তত্ত্ব / The Second Reality, I have approached the screen as a poetic surface—where silence speaks, repetition reveals, and metaphor becomes confrontation.
This film is, in essence, a mirror. It reflects back not just a man and a meal, but a question we must all face:
What if, in our pursuit of endless gratification, we become the ones trapped?
Ayan Mukherjee
Director
Director's Statement
দ্বিতীয় তত্ত্ব / The Second Reality emerged from a deep sense of discomfort with the way human desire has evolved into entitlement—how easily we consume, control, and extract from life without questioning the moral weight of our actions. This film is my attempt to reverse that gaze.
What if, in our pursuit of gratification and dominance, the very things we try to consume began to resist us? What if the objects of our indulgence—silent, passive, seemingly powerless—suddenly pushed back? This film imagines that reversal not just as a surreal possibility, but as a metaphorical reckoning.
The narrative is deliberately minimal—an ordinary man, a chicken, a kitchen—but beneath it lies an allegorical world. The chicken here is not just flesh; it is history, ritual, guilt, violence, and complicity. The act of eating becomes a theatre of power. Through this intimate, unsettling loop, I wanted to explore what it means to be trapped not by others, but by our own instincts, cycles, and unacknowledged brutality.
This is my first film, but my journey as an artist has always been interdisciplinary—across poetry, theatre, sound, performance, and visual art. I see cinema as a continuation of that search for form, meaning, and inner rupture. Dwitiyo Totto is a visual poem, a psychological mirror, and a question I continue to ask myself: what if the world we consume starts consuming us back?
Ayan Mukherjee