Soccer to portray India on leather

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Kolkata, Dec 14 (UNI) Italian love for soccer combined with a wander lust form a hitherto unexplored means to demystify India through football.

Thirty days, seven states and thousands of kilometres travel later, ''The Football Hunters'' have gathered hundreds of old, punctured and consumed footballs to portray the country.

''The Football Hunters is an Indian art project and a docu-feature of Italian origin with an Indian taste,'' Italian director from Rome, Paolo W Tamburella told UNI.

''In a country getting devoted more and more to cricket, finding football was not an easy task by any means as we have travelled across Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Orissa and Jharkhand, before moving into West Bengal,'' he said.

''The search has been surreal. Footballs became a way to explore India and to portrait many different aspects of the biggest democracy of the world,'' he said.

Paolo was still in awe as he revealed the many lessons he learnt and a few he unlearnt during his travel through the country.

Filmed between flooded football fields, grounds used to breed cows and goats, to host military parades or ''infamous' cricket games, The Foot Hunters, as they call themselves and by which the documentrary has been christened, is a pilgrimage through India that terminates after covering 4,400 kms in Kolkata.

''We decided to make Kolkata the last stop as it is the Mecca of Indian football,'' he said.

But how did the idea come? '' One day during our walk on the Malabar beach we saw a group of kids playing football. They asked me from which country I am and when I said Italy, they shouted in unison 'Totti'. I was amazed, '' he said.

''These small groups of street urchins, mostly sons of fishermen, were aware of Seria-A. I told them I will give them five footballs if they could make five groups of 11 players each. And next evening they were there. This love for football and the unity it forged gave me the idea,'' he said.

'' In Kolkata, we have gathered over 100 footballs from clubs like East Bengal, Mohun Bagan, Mohameddan Sporting, Aryans, Eastern Railways and many more. And each football told a story unique to its stitches,'' Paolo gushed.

So what did they plan to do ''The collected footballs will be used to create an exceptional art work. 'The Football Land' a borderless map made out of footballs from all over India, symbol of life and of collectivity. The Football Land has been stitched here and was taken on a round of the city,'' he said.

Paolo plans to take this documentary depicting the entire process of collecting balls, the roads covered and the people met to different short film festivals across the world and hold shows back in Italy.

''I have tried to investigate India through footballs. Its been a fascinating search. The villages have come alive and so have rural India. Through a game I have tied the country in knots and now it is time to showcase it across the world,'' he signed off.