Chitra Padmanabhan, The Pioneer, Feb 11, 1992:

"Filmmaker Nilita Vachani's perseverance finally paid off when her documentary Eyes of Stone won the golden Bough award at the Bombay International Film Festival last week. In fact Eyes of Stone has been picking up accolades ever since it beat the paralysis out of Doordarshan and was telecast last year. Around the same time the film was adjudged the best documentary at the 10th international Uppsala Festival in Sweden. The film got a special mention at the Cinema du Reel Festival in March 1990. All in all, this smoothly academic and deeply felt film has won acclaim at 14 different film festivals worldwide.

So what's so special about this film apart from its being a maiden venture with thematic and technical maturity unexpected in one so young? It is a powerful film with stark shades of a gripping psychodrama. Possession is routinely looked on as a problem, something to be cured, some one to be exorcised. Its causative circumstances have rarely been explored, and for the very first time on celluloid in this film. Structured as a flowing narrative, with the microphone and camera acting as intimate attendants on real life action, Eyes of Stone is a typical example of a catalytic documentary made in the Cinema Verite tradition. This genre itself is based on as supreme a paradox as that of imprisoning a demon within the walls of the body in order to achieve catharsis. The paradox is that artificial circumstances can be ordered, rather structured, to bring hidden truths to the surface…

…her signature voice is haunting and very individualistic. What is unprecedented is that Vachani has followed Shanta even after her recovery. Most researchers do not normally go to such trouble to round off their thesis."

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