Persistence Resistance in London
Goldsmiths, University of London
London School of Economics
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of Westminster
Brunel University
present
Persistence Resistance 2011: Documentary Practices in India
London, 1 – 8 November 2011
Persistence Resistance is premised on the belief that documentary practices in any place actively participate in the shaping of our times. The strong history of documentary filmmaking in India and the continued explorations and experimentations with documentary form offer an extensive intellectual and creative platform to think through and debate current urgencies in South Asia as well as in the UK, Europe and elsewhere internationally.
In its fourth year, Persistence Resistance 2011 (held in New Delhi from 7-11 February) celebrated the independent documentary artists’ deep engagement with the myriad forms that the documentary affords. Through the personal to the conceptual, the essayistic, the poetic, the performative, the self-reflective or the fictional, engaging humour, philosophy, music, the law or social movements – they create distinct political voices and impulses for their audiences to engage.
Persistence Resistance in London would like to widen the spectrum of conversations between those films and their audiences, between filmmakers and viewers through a series of constructed conversations between academics and practitioners. It introduces archival and very recent works that have not been shown in London previously and it sets out to expand the ways documentaries offer us to think and to act. While we start with a focus on Indian documentary practice to create a more informed ground to explore its specific histories, styles and provocations, the aim is to explore further political and aesthetic affiliations across geographical locations and disciplines.
The collaborative effort between Magic Lantern and five academic institutions – Goldsmiths, LSE, SOAS, University of Westminster and Brunel University – made it possible to create an event that focuses on in-depth conversations between and amongst filmmakers and theorists, linked to screenings, round-tables and with plenty of time for open discussions with the audience.
Filmmaker guests Arun Khopkar, Deepa Dhanraj, Rahul Roy, Rajula Shah and Saba Dewan, from India, Yasmine Kabir from Bangladesh, as well as UK based filmmakers John Wyver, Mairead McClean, Mao Mollona, Margaret Dickinson and Simon Chambers will be joined by, and be in conversations with, Alisa Lebow, Alpa Shah, Guilia Battaglia, Laura Bear, Lotte Hoek, Lucia King, Nicole Wolf, Partha Mitter, Radha D’Souza, Ravi Vasudevan, Ros Gray, Rosie Thomas, Stephen Hughes, Stewart Motha and Ziba Mir Hosseini.
We hope that Persistence Resistance 2011: Documentary Practices in India will be a celebration of both the plurality of the documentary practice and the ways of engaging with it.
All welcome and all events are free
The festival is realised with the support of the Public Diplomacy Division, Ministry of External Affairs.
London School of Economics has supported the participation of Yasmine Kabir.
The project was conceptualised with support from the British Council’s development grant
under Connections Through Culture.
THE SCHEDULE
| NEHRU CENTRE | ||
| 8 S Audley St, London W1K 1HF | ||
| 1/11/2011 | 18:30 to 20:30 | Inauguration |
| Odissi performance by Urbi Basu and troupe based on Bhavantarana | ||
| Screening: BHAVANTARANA, Kumar Shahani, 62 min, 1991 | ||
| SOAS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON | ||
| Khalili Lecture Theatre | ||
| 2/11/2011 | 13:00 to 15:00 | Screening: SOMETHING LIKE A WAR, Deepa Dhanraj, 52 min, 1991 |
| Discussion with filmmaker | ||
| UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER
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| P3 Gallery, University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS | ||
| 2/11/2011 | 17:00 to 18:30 | Indian Arts on Film |
| Round table with Arun Khopkar, Partha Mitter and John Wyver. Chaired by Rosie Thomas | ||
| Cayley Lecture Theatre, University of Westminster, Marylebone Campus | ||
| 19:00 to 20:40 | Screening: FIGURES OF THOUGHT, Arun Khopkar, 33 min, 1990 | |
| Screening: VOLUME ZERO, Arun Khopkar, 59 min, 2008 | ||
| 20:40 to 21:00 | Q&A with the filmmaker | |
| GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON | ||
| Small Hall/ Cinema, Richard Hoggart Building (Main Building) | ||
| 3/11/2011 | 17:00 to 20:00 | Screening and Discussion: Documentary as witness to the judiciary |
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Screening: INVOKING JUSTICE (work in progress), Deepa Dhanraj, 2011 | |
| Post screening discussion with filmmaker and Stewart Motha (Kent School of Law), chaired by Nicole Wolf | ||
| GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
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| Small Hall/ Cinema, Richard Hoggart Building (Main Building) | ||
| 4/11/2011 | 9:30 to 10:00 | Movements of everyday political/aesthetic practice – emergencies, revolutions and the paradoxes of involvement |
| Introduction by Nicole Wolf | ||
| 10:00 to 11:30 | Trajectories of Participation | |
| Deepa Dhanraj in conversation with Nicole Wolf | ||
| 11:45 to 13:30 | Dialogues in movement, poetry and song | |
| Interventions and Discussion with: Saba Dewan, Rajula Shah, Deepa Dhanraj, Rahul Roy, chaired by Nicole Wolf | ||
| 15:00 to 16:30 | Inside/Outside | |
| Margaret Dickinson in conversation with Ros Gray, with film clips | ||
| 17.00 to 18.30 | Involved subjectivities and precarious evidence – A preliminary concluding panel | |
| Interventions and Closing Discussion with Rahul Roy, Margaret Dickinson and Rajula Shah | ||
| LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS | ||
| Old Theatre, Ground Floor Old Building | ||
| 5/11/2011 | 9:30 to 09:40 | Global Migrations, Labour and Activism |
| Introduction by Laura Bear | ||
| 09:40 to 10:45 | Session A: Global Migration and the Labour of Film | |
| Screening: MY MIGRANT SOUL, Yasmine Kabir, 34 min, 2000 | ||
| Yasmine Kabir for discussion and question and answer | ||
| 10:45 to 11:45 | Session B: Migration, Translation and Activism | |
| Mao Mollona (showing segments of Steel Lives and of recent collaborative work in Brazil with steel workers, a visual artist Daria Martin and a choreographer from the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ based in Rio de Janeiro to generate fictional narratives) | ||
| Discussion and Q&A session | ||
| 12:00 to 13:10 | Session C: Circulation and the Labour of Construction and Destruction | |
| Screening: THE BURNING STOMACH, Laura Bear, 20 min, 2011 | ||
| Screening: THE LAST RITES, Yasmine Kabir, 17 min, 2008 | ||
| Discussion and Q&A | ||
| 5/11/2011 | 14:00 to 16:00 | The Underbelly of the Indian Boom: a spectrum of media representations |
| Introduction by Radha D’Souza and Alpa Shah | ||
| Session A: Mining and Development | ||
| Simon Chambers in conversation with Alpa Shah about different representations of adivasis, mining and development in India. | ||
| Screening: INDIA POISED, Times of India, 2 min, 2007 | ||
| Screening: Promotional film on a steel plant in Kalinga Nagar, Orissa by Tata, 10 min, undated | ||
| Screening: BEFORE DARK, Ajay T. G., 10 min, 2010 | ||
| Screening: COWBOYS IN INDIA, Simon Chambers, 30 min (shorter version), 2009 | ||
| 5/11/2011 | 16:30 to 17:15 | Session B: Human Rights Activism and Radical Politics |
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Deepa Dhanraj in conversation with Radha D’Souza about the making of her film, The Advocate, Chaired by Rahul Roy | |
| CLIPS from The ADVOCATE, Deepa Dhanraj, 2007 | ||
| 17:15 to 18:00 | Session C: Poverty and Resistance | |
| Chaired by Margaret Dickinson | ||
| Screening: WHY I AM NOT BPL, Ajay T. G., 10 min, 2011 | ||
| BBC RADIO 4 FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT BROADCAST ON ‘INDIA’S RED BELT’, Alpa Shah, 6 min, 2010 | ||
| Open Discussion chaired by Simon Chambers | ||
| LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
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| Old Theatre, Ground Floor Old Building | ||
| 6/11/2011 | 13:00 to 14:50 | Urban Dreams: Public Cultures, Sexuality and Pleasure |
| Introduction by Laura Bear/Ziba Mir Hosseini | ||
| Session A: Freedoms of the City: The Public Cultures of Masculinity | ||
| Screening: MAJMA, Rahul Roy, 54 min, 2001 | ||
| Discussion with Rahul Roy and Q&A | ||
| 15:00 to 15:40 | Session B: Dreams of the City: the public cultures of popular film | |
| Lotte Hoek (showing segments of Bangladeshi action films and the films she made of filmmakers to reflect on the circulation of images, sensory pleasure and cityscapes) | ||
| 16:00 to 17:30 | Session C: Freedoms of the City: the public cultures of female performance | |
| Screening: DELHI-MUMBAI-DELHI, Saba Dewan, 63 min, 2006 | ||
| Discussion with Saba Dewan and Q&A | ||
| Ziba Mir Hosseini in conversation with Saba Dewan and Rahul Roy | ||
| SOAS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON | ||
| Room 16 (First Floor Main Building) | ||
| 7/11/2011 | 10:00 to 20:00 | Video installation (time looped): THE WARKARI CYCLE by Lucia King |
| Khalili Lecture Theatre | ||
| 7/11/2011 | 10:00 to 11:15 | Contesting divides: folk music and performance cultures in contemporary documentary film |
| Screening: WORD WITHIN THE WORD, Rajula Shah, 74 min, 2008 | ||
| 11:30 to 13.00 | Session 1: Within and Without: Camera as Compass | |
| Rajula Shah & Lucia King in conversation about “Word Within the Word” and installation by Lucia King | ||
| 14:00 to 16:00 | Screening: THE OTHER SONG, Saba Dewan, 120 min, 2009 | |
| 16:30 to 18:00 | Session 2: Situating Marginalized Performance Practice through Documentary Practice | |
| Saba Dewan discusses “The Other Song” and other films of this tripych moderated by Lucia King | ||
| 18:00 to 18:45 | Viewing time to visit the VIDEO INSTALLATION at Room 116 (First Floor Main Buiding, SOAS) | |
| 18:45 to 20:00 | Session 3: The cultural narrative and the respons(e)ability of the filmmaker | |
| Round table with Saba Dewan, Lucia King, Mairead McClean and Rajula Shah | ||
| SOAS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON | ||
| Room 16 (First Floor Main Building) | ||
| 8/11/2011 | 10:00 to 20:00 | Video installation (time looped): THE WARKARI CYCLE by Lucia King |
| Khalili Lecture Theatre | ||
| 8/11/2011 | 10:00 to 12:00 | Audiences and Documentary – focus South India |
| Conversation with Deepa Dhanraj, Giulia Battaglia, Stephen Hughes and Ravi Vasudevan | ||
| Screening: 16mm – MEMORIES, MOVEMENT AND A MACHINE, K.R. Manoj, 40 min, 2007 | ||
| 13:00 to 16:00 | Ethnographic film and documentary filmmaking in India | |
| Screening: THE CITY BEAUTIFUL, Rahul Roy, 78 min, 2003 | ||
| Rahul Roy in conversation with Stephen Hughes | ||
| 16:30 onwards | Unequal relations: filmmaker/film subject/spectator | |
| A Concluding Panel with with Deepa Dhanraj, Saba Dewan, Yasmine Kabir, Rajula Shah and Rahul Roy. Chaired by Alisa Lebow | ||
THE SESSIONS
2/11/2011, University of Westminster
Indian Arts on Film
What makes a successful documentary about art? What specific issues arise when translating the visual arts onto film? How far do different cultural contexts require different approaches? This seminar brings together documentary filmmakers and arts theorists from India and UK to explore these questions and discuss a range of approaches. Following this, two Indian arts documentaries by Arun Khopkar will be screened.
3/11/2011, Goldsmiths, University of London
Documentary as witnessing the judiciary
Filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj will discuss her current film project ‘Invoking Justice’ and share ‘work in progress’ material. Following her long-standing interest in ways of speaking and listening as well as local practices of the judiciary, Dhanraj has worked with a group of rural and small-town Muslim women in South India who set up their own Jamaat (community council) in 2003. As traditionally Jamaats can only be founded and run by men, this is an act of extraordinary challenge and courage. Dowry harassment, domestic violence, divorce, maintenance and property disputes shall no longer be judged by men. Deepa Dhanraj follows the Jamaat’s growth in strength and legitimacy through case studies and hereby takes part in processes of calling for and listening to witness accounts. Questions concerning justice, belief and the practices of customary law are put forward.
Deepa Dhanraj’s presentation will be followed by a conversation with the legal theorist Stewart Motha (Reader at the Kent Law School). Chaired by Nicole Wolf.
4/11/2011, Goldsmiths, University of London
Movements of everyday political/aesthetic practice – emergencies, revolutions and the paradoxes of involvement
What are the contours of political documentary filmmaking in India and how can we delineate their affiliations with related practices, discourses and languages elsewhere? How might an in-depth inquiry into the histories of emerging forms at moments of crises or alongside the growth of social and political movements forge relevant questions for our future and present involvements? And how, in turn, do the very micropolitical questions, dilemmas, motivations and decisions, taken by filmmakers, film subjects and audiences for aesthetic, ethical and political ends, stand in dialogue with and inform those larger questions?
This day’s events will introduce five filmmakers whose works probe the above questions in distinctly different ways. They have started their trajectories at different historical moments and from varied locations that respectively inform their distinctly singular political/aesthetic involvements.
Session A: Trajectories of participation: Deepa Dhanraj in conversation with Nicole Wolf
Deepa Dhanraj’s filmmaking career enfolds a period of tremendous transitions – from a post-Emergency energetic women’s movement to the rise of communal conflict and Hindu-nationalist majoritarianism and a neoliberal globalisation project impacting on urban and rural media/political conditions. Starting with Yugantar, one of the first state-independent film collectives in India, Deepa Dhanraj has since the early 1980s been committed to working at the interstice of non-fiction film and local women’s groups. Her collaborative film works engage equally with power and governance on structural levels as well as with singular and collective acts of dissent. What are the challenges and possibilities for committed filmmaking and the filmmaker’s political and aesthetic locations within these shifting political terrains? And, what are the questions posed towards and the answers desired from historical moments of political filmmaking – from the side of practice, theory, our contemporary political frustrations and ambitions? The starting point for these questions will be rarely seen excerpts from ‘Molkarin’ (Maid Servant, 1981), ‘Tambaku Chaakila Oob Ali’ (1982), ‘Sudesha’ (1983) and ‘Kya hua is shaher ko’ (What happened to this city, 1985), as 16mm film clips or recently restored digitised versions.
Session B: Dialogues in Movement, Poetry and Song
Can new movements, collective political acts, solidarities and ways of being in the world be forged through the concrete filmmaking experience? Filmmakers Saba Dewan and Rajula Shah will present examples of particular dialogues that have been crucial to the development of their respective aesthetic and political location. While Saba’s film work has been in close albeit changing relationship with feminist thought and practice and has developed from a long-standing engagement with the political and moral transcripts surrounding the figure of the courtesan, Rajula’s practice often evolves from being situated at ‘borders’ – may these be geographical, cultural, political, at the interstices of speech and silence, self and the world or moment and eternity. What are the film/politics that emerge when in active and reciprocal dialogue, questioning or only tangentially relating with the contours of movements? How does on the other hand a conversation with practices of belief, with forms of speech and with a song engender singular politics? How might these seemingly diverse involvements impact on each other? Excerpts from selected early and recent films by Saba Dewan and Rajula Shah will be followed by commentaries from Deepa Dhanraj and Rahul Roy. Chaired by Nicole Wolf.
Session C: Inside/Outside: Margaret Dickinson in conversation with Ros Gray
Margaret Dickinson, who has worked as an independent filmmaker and teacher in Britain, Mozambique and India since the 1960s, discusses what it means to work as an insider and as an outsider in relation to commercial filmmaking, a national culture, and the State. Dickinson has consistently worked against the grain of the mainstream cinema industry in Britain. In 1971 she made Behind the Lines, about FRELIMO’s armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique. After independence in 1975, she was involved in training the first generation of Mozambican filmmakers within the framework of a socialist government in a process of decolonisation. More recently she has used pedagogy to make an intervention against the class hegemony of India’s media elite with the Images in Social Change Network. Spanning diverse cultures and historical moments, how can these filmmaking and teaching practices be understood politically? What are the implications of working against or for the ruling power? Spanning the emergence and global consolidation of the neoliberal project, can these practices be understood as part of the same ongoing struggle?
Session D: Involved Subjectivities and Precarious Evidence – A preliminary concluding panel
How do we locate ourselves in scenarios with mutated democracies, increasing neoliberal stronghold on our lives, evidences of injustice having no political effect, accelerations of crises and impulses through collective acts of dissent and desires for different kinds of interventions? What are the subjectively felt challenges for political filmmaking within the contemporary scenario, in diverse and interrelated localities? How do we think and work with these outer realities without submerging subjective involvements and personal drives for creative responses?
Rahul Roy will open this final session by way of sketching his current working context, moving between newly felt questions demanded through political terrains and his own personal aesthetics encompassing situational likings, discomforts, cultural influences, relationships, conflicts, film as a moment in your life – that may together form a documentary practice and forge an artistic form.
Followed by commentaries from Margaret Dickinson and Rajula Shah and a wider discussion with all participants and the audience.
5/11/2011, London School of Economics
Global Migrations, Labour and Activism
Globalisation has become a received idea, even a cliché, that is frequently symbolised in the media by the economic growth of South Asia. But what actually is the lived experience of contemporary migration, labour and urban life? How can film represent and act upon this experience? This panel moves beyond the image of an inevitable global economic juggernaut that causes boom and bust to explore these questions. It will focus on how film can follow the uncertain, individual paths of people, objects and work-practices across the world. Central to the conversation will be an examination of migration and labour as potentially radical acts. Migration (or movements out of place) and labour (as a creative generation of new objects) might offer more than a subject matter for activist film. They may be a model for activist film practice.
Session A: Global Migration and the Labour of Film
Screening of ‘My Migrant Soul’ by Yasmine Kabir, followed by discussion and Q&A with filmmaker.
Session B: Migration, Translation and Activism
Mao Mollona will show segments of ‘Steel Lives’ and recent collaborative work in Brazil with steel workers, a visual artist Daria Martin and a choreographer from the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ based in Rio de Janeiro to generate fictional narratives.
Session C: Circulation and the Labour of Construction and Destruction
Screening of ‘The Burning of the Stomach’ by Laura Bear and ‘The Last Rites’ by Yasmine Kabir; followed by discussion and Q&A.
5/11/2011, London School of Economics
The Underbelly of the Indian Boom: a spectrum of media representations
India is allegedly shining. The economy is booming. The forces of globalisation exploding, the middle classes supposedly swelling, international trade burgeoning and state controlled industries and sectors privatising. But is this at the expense of the poorest, who are being pushed off their land to make way for industrial development? This panel explores who is benefiting from, and who is resisting the fruits of economic growth, and how the Indian state is responding to their plight.
The media representations in this panel particularly speak to the issues of mining and development; poverty and resistance; and human rights activism. How and why are different genres of films on the impact of mining in India being promoted by different interest groups – mining companies, activists, independent film-makers? What are the consequences? How do we compare the possibilities of radio and film in exploring the everyday struggles of India’s poor in the midst of radical political movements?
Session A: Mining and Development
Simon Chambers will be in conversation with Alpa Shah about different representations of adivasis, mining and development in India. The conversation will be followed by screening of ‘India Poised’ by Times of India; a promotional film by the Tata group on a steel plant in Kalinga Nagar; ‘Before Dark’ by Ajay T. G. and ‘Cowboys in India’ by Simon Chambers.
Session B: Human Rights Activism and Radical Politics
Deepa Dhanraj will be in conversation with Radha D’Souza about the making of her film, ‘The Advocate’ using clips from the film, Chaired by Rahul Roy.
Session C: Poverty and Resistance
Chaired by Margaret Dickinson, this session will screen ‘Why I am not BPL’ by Ajay T. G. and ‘BBC Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent Broadcast On ‘India’s Red Belt’ by Alpa Shah. This will be followed by an open discussion chaired by Simon Chambers.
6/11/2011, London School of Economics
Urban Dreams: Public Cultures, Sexuality and Pleasure
India’s cities are frequently represented as sites of exploitation and poverty. While accepting the reality of structural inequalities of class and gender, this panel explores the complex pleasures and ambivalent freedoms of urban public cultures. It examines how these emerge within the constraints of the pressures of making a living, yet imaginatively exceed these limits in dreams of freedom and pleasure. It will also reflect on how the film image, both documentary and popular mass cinema, circulates in urban spaces. How does documentary make the city a new place and how does this differ from the effect of popular commercial films on the experience of the urban?
Session A: Freedoms of the City: The Public Cultures of Masculinity
Screening of ‘Majma’ by Rahul Roy, followed by an interactive discussion with Rahul Roy.
Session B: Dreams of the City: the public cultures of popular film
Lotte Hoek will show segments of Bangladeshi action films and the films she made of filmmakers to reflect on the circulation of images, sensory pleasure and cityscapes.
Session C: Freedoms of the City: the public cultures of female performance
A screening of ‘Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi’ by Saba Dewan will be followed by an interactive discussion with the filmmaker. The session will conclude with Ziba Mir Hosseini conversing with Saba Dewan and Rahul Roy.
7/11/2011, SOAS, University of London
Contesting divides: folk music and performance cultures in contemporary documentary film
Rajula Shah’s film, ‘Sabad Nirantar’ (Word Within the Word) demonstrates the connection felt by villagers of West-central India (Malwa) with Kabir’s poetry (recited in song) that has become integrated into their everyday language and social gatherings. Saba Dewan’s film, ‘The Other Song’ traces the threads of thumri as passed through families in Varanasi, Lucknow and Bihar in this cross-cultural music heritage. The Warkari (pilgrims) belong to a Maharashtrian devotional movement that shares the sung poetry of its’ saints and many popular dances conducted during the pilgrimage season. The pilgrimage is the focus of Lucia King’s video installation work ‘The Warkari Cycle’.
This day’s sessions will investigate the choices that filmmakers are faced with when intersecting such cultural traditions in India on camera. In counterpoint with urban theatrical ‘performance’, these musical transmission systems arise through devotional cultures and connections at the micro-level of kinship and community. Questioning assumptions of what is usually relegated as ‘marginal’ in music/dance cultures, the filmmakers reveal what lines they have needed to cross in doing so, and how this translates into film forms.
Session A: Within and without: Camera as compass
After the screening of ‘Sabad Nirantar’ (Word Within the Word) by Rajula Shah, filmmakers Rajula Shah and Lucia King explore the link between poetics, the relationships established ‘on set’ with their filmed subjects and the compositional choices in their productions. They ask how the visual and poetic structure of their films also exposes the way in which they enter the worlds and concerns of their filmed subjects. In King’s case, she considers the geopolitical implications of reproducing an Indian tradition on film as a cultural outsider and in Shah’s case, from the threshold of belonging and not belonging to her filmed subjects’ ways of transmitting and experiencing Kabir’s musical poetry. The filmmakers will also discuss how they enter these relationships as artists. How does this affect their exploration and inhabitation of the social spaces concerned, informing filmmaking method? Is it possible to talk about the ‘responsibility’ of the artist-filmmaker in the context of the discourse around the ‘documentary’? The conversation is with reference to Shah’s ‘Sabad Nirantar’ and King’s ‘The Warkari Cycle’, the latter based on pilgrims who are part of a Maharashtrian bhakti movement.
‘The Warkari Cycle’ by Lucia King runs on a continuous loop all day in Room 116 on 7/11/2011 and 8/11/2011.
Session B: Situating Marginalised Performance Practice through Documentary Practice
The filmmaker, Saba Dewan, will be questioned about her understanding of the thumri (musical form) that she has documented, and the various vocalists she encountered in making ‘The Other Song’ (2009). She will speak about the significance of the physical sites chosen as film locations in relation to the protagonists, and the way her film narrative situates the thumri tradition for audiences. The protagonists are women who have sustained a legacy of songs by the legendary RasoolanBai, a renowned courtesan singer of Benares. Dewan will also discuss (showing clips) the relationship of this film with two remaining films of this trilogy: ‘Naach’ (2008) and ‘Delhi-Mumbai Delhi’ (2006). All three films focus on women who belong to vocal and dance traditions associated with courtesans and popular bar dancing (in travelling night clubs). Dewan also explores how her films question the tension between the women’s deprecated social image and their private experience of themselves and their art form. What film tactics here re-aligns how thumri is valued? The format is an ‘in conversation’ with Lucia King.
Session C: The cultural narrative and the respons(e)ability of the filmmaker
Panellists: Saba Dewan, Rajula Shah, Lucia King joined by Mairead MacClean. This session will raise questions that the audience is invited to re-think with the panellists about documentary practice. In relation to the films that have been screened during today’s sessions, but including others (in an international independent filmmakers’ context) points of inquiry will include:
How do we negotiate the critical lines between the people that we film, our audiences and our distribution contexts as filmmakers?
Are our films ‘corrective’ of mainstream representations of the people we evoke? Are we bending the boundaries of assumed cultural difference between our filmed subjects/ourselves?
What is poetry in a film? What is the relationship of artist-filmmakers vis- à-vis their subject/s’ cultural reference points? What is the negotiation of Self/World? When do boundaries begin to collapse? What nurtures the practice, and how does it affect us in turn? Do fixed notions exist regarding the ‘practice’ that we stand by?
How do we see ourselves when entering domains of ‘traditional (music) cultures’ (like thumri)? What questions are asked before seeking entry into areas outside our ‘known’ ambit; what is at stake in the dialogue?
8/11/2011, SOAS, University of London
Audiences and Documentary – Focus south India
This session explores the relationship between documentary film and its audiences in India. It investigates the role of audiences in filmmaking in general, and in documentary film practices in India specifically. In particular, the session focuses on the historical circumstances in which documentary films took shape and acquired popularity in India. The session will draw attention to documentary audiences in South India and take examples from: – the historical function of the Odessa Movie in Kerala, – the contemporary role of documentary festivals such as Vibgyor or Madurai Film Festival amongst others – and the social and political importance of media activist groups, such as Pedestrian Pictures, in Bangalore. This session will work as a conversation between academics who researched film audiences and Deepa Dhanraj. The academics in this session include Stephen Hughes, Ravi Vasudevan and Giulia Battaglia.
8/11/2011, SOAS, University of London
Ethnographic film and documentary filmmaking in India
The categorisation of a documentary film as being ‘ethnographic’ has been a dubious distinction amongst Indian documentary filmmakers. It is common for the term to be used negatively to criticise a filmmaking style that seeks to objectify and exoticise marginal peoples using racist and paternalistic forms of representation that are remnants of colonial rule and were continued by the state sponsored Films Division of India. Given this attributed legacy, it is not surprising that some Indian documentary filmmakers have sought to distance themselves from any association with the ethnographic.
In contrast, Rahul Roy is one of the very few contemporary Indian documentary filmmakers who have productively engaged with ethnographic film. Making films from the late 1980s onwards, both individually and in collaboration with filmmaker Saba Dewan, Roy has increasingly cultivated an on-going dialogue with the international circuit of ethnographic filmmakers, films and festivals. Roy has also been instrumental in organising the first ethnographic film festival in India- the Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival during 2008.
This session takes up the issue of ethnographic film with Rahul Roy. Why does ethnographic film matter for documentary filmmakers in India? What is the relationship between ethnographic and documentary filmmaking? Is there a specific historical legacy of ethnographic film in India that would distinguish it from elsewhere? The session will screen Rahul Roy’s ‘The City Beautiful’.
8/11/2011, SOAS, University of London
Unequal relations: filmmaker/film subject/spectator
It is all too easy for a documentary film festival organized around the presence of filmmakers to privilege the extraordinary creative, intellectual, technical and laborious efforts involved in filmmaking. Yet, to do so runs the risk of neglecting the representational politics inherent in the three way relationship between documentary filmmakers, film subjects and film viewers. To be fair, filmmakers are perhaps more keenly aware than others of the need to assess this complex tangle of unequal power relations. Can documentary filmmaking avoid exploiting its films subjects? Is it possible for documentary films to avoid unwittingly promoting stereotypes about already marginalised subjects amongst widely dispersed audiences?
Chaired by Alisa Lebow, this will be a concluding panel with Deepa Dhanraj, Saba Dewan, Yasmine Kabir, Rajula Shah and Rahul Roy, who will consider their performative and on-going relations with both film subjects and audiences.
ACADEMICS
Alisa Lebow
Alisa Lebow is Senior Lecturer in Screen Media at Brunel University. She is the author of ‘First Person Jewish’ (UMN Press, 2008) and the editor of the forthcoming ‘Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary’ (Wallflower Press, 2012). She is also a filmmaker whose films include ‘For the Record: The World Tribunal on Iraq’ (2007), ‘Treyf’ (1998) and ‘Outlaw’ (1994).
Alpa Shah
Alpa Shah is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of ‘In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India’, 2010 (Durham and London: Duke University Press with an Indian edition by New Delhi: Oxford University Press) and co-editor of ‘Windows into a Revolution: Ethnographies of Maoism in India and Nepal’, 2011 (New Delhi: Social Science Press). She has made a radio documentary, ‘India’s Red Belt’ with BBC Radio 4 and has co-directed (with Ajay T. G.), a Jandarshan film, ‘Heads and Tales’.
Giulia Battaglia
Giulia Battaglia is a Teaching Fellow for the Centre for Media and Film Studies at SOAS, University of London. Her academic interest includes: South Asia, Indian film culture, documentary film, visual culture, media and cultural activism, digital technology, media and visual anthropology. She is currently finishing her PhD in anthropology – a historical ethnography of contemporary documentary film practices in India.
Laura Bear
Laura Bear is a lecturer in the anthropology department at the London School of Economics. She is the author of ‘The Jadu House: an Intimate History of Anglo-India’ (Doubleday 2000) and ‘Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy and the Intimate Historical Self’ (Columbia University Press 2007). In 2008-2010 she carried out two years of ESRC funded research on the waterscape of the Hooghly river in Kolkata with ship-builders, dockers, river boatmen and container ship pilots. She has made four films in collaboration with the men she worked with on the river. She has also recently curated an exhibition with the artists collective, Hastings Arts Forum, ‘Conflicts in Time’, generated in part by these films.
Lotte Hoek
Lotte Hoek is a lecturer in the department of social anthropology at Edinburgh University. Her research and publications explore the public and visual cultures of the Bangladeshi popular film industry . Her thesis ‘Cut-Pieces: Obscenity and the Cinema in Bangladesh’ is an ethnography of the Bangladesh film industry and focuses on the common practice of inserting sexually explicit imagery into B-quality action movies. As part of her research she has made films of the process of production in order to reflect on the act of representation. Recent publications include, ‘More Sexpression Please! Screening the Female Voice and Body in the Bangladesh Film Industry’ in Birgit Meyer (ed.) ‘Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses’ (Palgrave-Macmillan 2009).
Lucia King
Since graduating from Central St. Martins (College of Art, London) and the Rijksakademie (Postgraduate Fine Arts residency in Amsterdam) Lucia King has exhibited her paintings and audio-visual installations extensively in galleries and museums across Europe. Since 2000 she has worked on co-productions with India-based theatre artists and filmmakers, and was based in New Delhi for four years. She has curated several artist-led programmes between India and UK. A central concern of her work is to question the transformation of the body in performance (and other art forms) through the parallel realities induced by the experience of making artworks. This results in drawings paintings and films where the relationship between these media is apparent. She lectures part time in the University of Surrey and is an Associate Artist with Artsadmin (London). She is currently completing a PhD on filmmaker-to-filmed-subject relationships in documentary practices of India.
Nicole Wolf
Nicole Wolf lives in London and Berlin and has been affiliated with documentary film practices in India since 1996. She is now a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths and curates film events. One of her main interests is political cinema, including its histories of experimental practices and the layers of theoretical inquiries that arise from there. Next to more recent research into wider political/creative practices in Pakistan and Kashmir, she co-edited (with Bhaskar Sarkar) ‘Indian Documentary Studies: Contours of a Field’, a special issue of BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies (forthcoming) and is working on her book ‘Make it real! Documentary politics and feminist thought in India’.
Partha Mitter
Partha Mitter is Professor Emeritus in Art History at the University of Sussex. He has been a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown and Mass and Getty Research Institute. He was also Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecturer at All Souls College, Oxford. His Books include ‘Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art’, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1977: Chicago University Press Paperback, 1992; ‘Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922’, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ‘Indian Art’, Oxford University Press, 2002; ‘The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde 1922-1947’, Reaktion Books 2007, and numerous articles.
Radha D’Souza
Radha D’Souza is a Reader in Law at the University of Westminster. She has taught law at University of Waikato in New Zealand, and development studies, sociology and human geography at the University of Auckland. She practised law in the High Court of Mumbai in the areas of labour rights, constitutional and administrative law, public interest litigation and human rights. She is a social justice activist who has worked with labour movements and democratic rights movements as organizer and as activist lawyer in India. She is also a writer and columnist. Her short stories, essays and columns are published within and outside India. She is the author of ‘Interstate Conflicts Over Krishna Waters: Law, Science and Imperialism’, 2006 (Hyderabad: Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd).
Ravi Vasudevan
Ravi Vasudevan works at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and is a co-initiator of Sarai, the Centre’s urban and media studies programme. He is a member of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series, editorial advisor to Screen, co-founder of BioScope, a journal of South Asian screen studies and has edited ‘Making Meaning in Indian Cinema’ (OUP, 2000). His ‘The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema’ (Ranikhet, Permanent Black, 2010) has recently been released in its international edition by Palgrave Macmillan. Vasudevan is currently Smuts Fellow at Cambridge.
Ros Gray
Ros Gray is a theorist, researcher and lecturer. She is Lecturer in Art Practice (Critical Studies) in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths and Tutor for Research in the Department of Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art. Her research revolves around militant cinema and its global filmmaking networks, the screen as site of radical gathering, anti-colonial and postcolonial theory. Ros Gray has published her work in The Journal of African Cinemas, Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, and the Journal of Visual Cultures; she is currently preparing a chapter for the book ‘Moving Images of Postcommunism’ (edited by Lars Kristensen 2011), and a monograph, ‘The Vanguard of the World: Cinemas of the African Revolution’.
Rosie Thomas
Rosie Thomas is Director of the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media (CREAM) and Co-director of the India Media Centre at the University of Westminster. She is a pioneer of the academic study of the Bombay film industry and, since 1985, has published widely on Indian cinema. Throughout the 1990s she practised as a television producer making documentaries, arts and current affairs programmes for Channel Four, many on South Asia related topics. Rosie’s current research interests include pre-independence popular Indian cinema and South Asian arts and documentary. She is co-founder and co-editor of the international Sage journal BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies.
Stephen Hughes
Stephen Putnam Hughes was born and raised in California and completed PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology at The University of Chicago. He currently teaches Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His teaching has focused on the Anthropology of Media with an emphasis on documentary and ethnographic film. His research and publications relate primarily to Tamil speaking south India, where over the course of the last twenty five years, he has worked on a various topics including film history, sound media, religion and politics of mass media.
Stewart Motha
Stewart Motha is Reader in Law, School of Law, University of Kent, and Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study, South Africa. He has published widely on questions of postcolonial sovereignty, indigenous land rights, and political theology and democracy. His research draws on visual art and literature in examining questions of memory, home, exile, and political violence. His articles have been published in a variety of international journals including, Journal of Law, Culture, and Humanities; Theory, Culture and Society; Law and Critique; Journal of Law and Society, and the Australian Feminist Law Journal. In 2007 he edited a book titled ‘Democracy’s Empire: Sovereignty, Law, Violence’ (Blackwell). A co-edited volume, ‘Reading Modern Law: Critical Methodologies and Sovereign Formations’ is forthcoming with Routledge in 2012.
Ziba Mir Hosseini
Ziba Mir Hosseini is an independent consultant, academic, and writer on Middle Eastern issues, based at the London Middle East Institute and the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, both at SOAS, University of London. Dr. Mir-Hosseini has held numerous research fellowships and visiting professorships, including Girton College, Cambridge; Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; and Hauser Global Law Visiting Professor at New York University. She is a founding member of Musawah Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family and a council member of Women Living Under Muslim Laws. Her publications include ‘Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco’ (I. B. Tauris, 1993, 2002), ‘Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran’ (Princeton University Press, 1999), and (with Richard Tapper) ‘Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform’ (I. B. Tauris, 2006). She has also directed (with Kim Longinotto) two award-winning feature-length documentary films on contemporary issues in Iran: ‘Divorce Iranian Style’ (1998) and ‘Runaway’ (2001). She has a B.A. in sociology from Tehran University and a PhD in social anthropology from University of Cambridge.
PRACTITIONERS
Arun Khopkar
Arun Khopkar obtained his Diploma in Film Direction from FTII in 1974. He has directed two feature and several non-feature films. His films on arts and artists have won over fifteen national and international awards. He was awarded the Golden Lotus, the highest National Award three times for his short films. His book on the film director Guru Dutt won the National Award for the best book on cinema. He is a film scholar and has contributed papers on film aesthetics to international journals. He is an internationally recognized authority on Eisenstein. He has taught film theory and practice at various institutions like Moscow School for Advanced Cinematography, Jawaharlal Nehru University, FTII, National School of Drama, etc. He was a Homi Bhabha Fellow. He is widely travelled and knows French, German, Russian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, English, Sanskrit and has diplomas in Italian and Japanese.
Deepa Dhanraj
Deepa Dhanraj is an award winning filmmaker who has been actively involved in the women’s movement since 1980. Over the years, she has participated in workshops, seminars and discussion groups on various issues related to women’s status – political participation, health and education. Deepa has an extensive filmography spanning nearly three decades that include many series of films on education and health as well as award wining documentaries. ‘Enough of this Silence’ (2008), ‘The Advocate’ (2007), ‘Nari Adalat’ (2000), ‘Itta Hejje Mundakka Thegiya Bediri Hindakka’, a series of 12 films for elected women in Gram Panchayats (1995), ‘The Legacy of Malthus’ (1994), ‘Something like a War’ (1991), ‘Kya Hua Iss Shehar Ko’ (1986) and ‘Sudesha’ (1983), are a few of her films. Her films have travelled to numerous film festivals world wide.
John Wyver
John Wyver is a writer and producer with Illuminations and Senior Research Fellow in the School of Media, Arts and Design at the University of Westminster. He has produced and directed numerous films about the visual arts over the past thirty years, including documentaries with Anish Kapoor, Anthony Gormley, Joseph Beuys and Cindy Sherman. He has also recently produced television films of ‘Hamlet’ (2009) and ‘Macbeth’ (2010). His books include ‘Vision On: Film, Television and the Arts in Britain’ (2007) and he is currently Principal Investigator on the three-year AHRC-funded research project Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television.
Mairead McClean
Mairead McClean produces films and art installations around the themes of memory and identity. Her film, ‘For the Record’ was premiered at The 9th Belfast Film Festival in April 2009. Her installation ‘bell(a)exchange’ a solo show made for the Void Gallery, Derry, in 2007 was subsequently selected for an award by Hou Hanru, Director of Exhibitions, San Francisco Art Institute at Ev+a 2008, Limerick City Art Gallery, and chosen by Lizzie Carey Thomas, Curator at Tate Britain, for The Claremorris Open 2008, Ireland. Other works have been included in ‘Late at The Tate’, Tate Britain, 2006 and presented at galleries in Tokyo, USA, Canada and Europe. Her film ‘State of Mind remix #4’ (2005) was presented in the UK’s first film-poem DVD Anthology published by The Film-Poetry Society. Her award winning 35mm short film ‘Way Past’ was screened at International film festivals and artwork recently published in Filmwaves Magazine, UK.
Mao Mollona
Mao Mollona is a senior lecturer in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths. He has directed Steel Lives (2000) and is currently working on a collaborative film project with steel workers in Brazil. He is the author of ‘Made in Sheffield: an Ethnography of Industrial Life and Politics’ (Berghahn 2009) and of ‘The Anthropology of Work: a Reader’ (Berg 2010) with Johnny Parry and Geert De Neve.
Margaret Dickinson
Margaret Dickinson is an independent film producer/director who also writes on film and politics and is currently working on a documentary about construction workers. Her films include productions for the Arts Council, the BFI, Channel 4 and the ILO. Her 1970 documentary, ‘Behind the Lines’, about Mozambique’s independence struggle, was recently restored for screening in Mozambique and Europe. Margaret has taught film in Mozambique and UK and co-ordinated an experiment in media access training in Chhattisgarh State, India. She is the editor of ‘Rogue Reels – Oppositional Film in Britain 1945 -1990’, 1999 (BFI Publishing) and co-author (with Sarah Street) of ‘Cinema and State’.
Rahul Roy
Rahul Roy completed his masters in Film and TV production from the Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 1987 and since then has been working as an independent documentary film maker. His work has focused on communalism, labour and masculinities. His films have been widely screened internationally and won several awards. Besides film making, he has been researching and writing on masculinities. His graphic book on masculinities titled ‘A Little Book on Men’, was recently published by Yoda Press.
Rajula Shah
Rajula Shah, born in 1974, has a Diploma in Film Direction from Film & Television Institute of India. She is an independent filmmaker based in Pune. Her films include ‘Sabad Nirantar’ (2007) and ‘Beyond The Wheel’ (2005). Rajula also publishes poetry and short stories in various journals. Her poetry collection ‘Parchhain ki Khidki Se’ was awarded the Navlekhan Puraskar by Bharatiya Jyanpeeth in 2004. She also translates literary work and writes on cinema.
Saba Dewan
Saba Dewan is a documentary filmmaker based in New Delhi, India. Her work has focussed on communalism, gender, sexuality and culture. Her notable films include ‘Dharmayuddha’ (Holy War, 1989), ‘Nasoor’ (Festering Wound, 1991), ‘Khel’ (The Play, 1994), ‘Barf’ (Snow, 1997) and ‘Sita’s family’ (2001) and have been screened extensively in India and at international film festivals. For the past few years she has been working on a trilogy of films focussing on stigmatised women performers. ‘Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi’ (2006) on the lives of bar dancers was the first film of the trilogy; the second being ‘Naach’ (The Dance, 2008) that explores the lives of women who dance in rural fairs. Both the films have been screened widely and have generated critical acclaim. The third and final film of the trilogy is ‘The Other Song’ (2009) about the art and lifestyle of the tawaifs or the courtesans.
Simon Chambers
Simon Chambers was a Youth Worker in London for 14 years helping disadvantaged teenagers. In 2004 he completed his training at the National Film and Television School in London where he won the Royal Television Society award for best European Student Documentary. In 2006 his first feature creative documentary ‘Every Good Marriage Begins With Tears’ was shown on BBC, and showed on TV in around 30 countries, winning several prizes at festivals. In 2009 he completed another feature length creative documentary ‘Cowboys in India’ which has also won several prizes and has shown on TV in UK, USA and India. He teaches part time at the National Film and Television School in the UK.
Yasmine Kabir
Yasmine Kabir is an independent filmmaker based in Bangladesh. Her films have been seen widely all over the world and have received many awards and acclaim. Her filmography includes: ‘Death Chant’ (1992), ‘A day at the Embassy’ (1996), ‘For Solaiman’ (1997), ‘A Mother’s Lament’ (Duhshomoy, 1999), ‘My Migrant Soul’ (Porobashi Mon Amar, 2000), ‘A Certain Liberation’ (Shadhinota, 2003) and ‘The Last Rites’ (2008).
THE FILMS
16mm Memories, Movement and a Machine
Director: K. R. Manoj
40 min, 2007
Memories of the 70’s bring with it memories about cinema. Those days, considered to be the high point of ‘new wave’ or ‘art film’ and the film society movement in Keralam, one felt a sort of frisson nouveau in the air, a feeling of being at a turning point, as if something was about to happen.
Film society movement introduced world cinema and the world of cinema to the public on a scale that was unimaginable and impossible earlier. It worked in the fissure between contemporary Malayalam cinema and world cinema, opened up a new world before the cineastes and helped create a new sensibility. The concerns, techniques and imaginary of both were worlds apart for the neophytes.
16mm tries to trace back the trajectory of film society movement in Keralam and its relationship with a machine – 16mm film projector. Now abandoned as an obsolete technology, 16mm projection was the soul and source of the movement at the time and still burrs on in the minds of a generation of cineastes. A journey through the images that try to capture the enigma of the cultural interface produced by a post independent cultural movement…
Before Dark
Director: Ajay T. G.
10 min, 2010
Farmers in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh are being displaced to make way for a coal mine owned by the Jindal group. ‘Before Dark’ shows the rough tactics employed by company agents to clear the land as well as attempts by those affected to campaign for their rights. The film won second prize at the 2011 Jeevika Film Festival in New Delhi.
Bhavantarana
Director: Kumar Shahani
62 min, 1991
Born in Raghurajpur in Orissa, Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, one of the greatest exponents of the classical dance form of Odissi, dedicated his life to refining the dance form by chiselling out an elegant structural niche for it – in all that is sacred in art. Through a series of performances, poetry and excerpts from Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra’s life, Bhavantarana travels back to a time in India where dance was looked upon as a form of prayer; a period during which, unlike contemporary times, dance was not considered feminine and men were also keen patrons and teachers of dance.
Cowboys in India
Director: Simon Chambers
30 min (shorter version), 2009
In a remote and impoverished region of India, a London filmmaker is unaware of the trouble he will cause his two endearing, bumbling local guides as they investigate the Corporate Social Responsibility programme of a respected London based mining company.
The company plans to chop the top off a local tribe’s sacred mountain, promising to bring all the benefits of modernity to the area. But many of the tribal people vow to fight with their bows and arrows against ‘enforced development’, preferring a simple life in nature.
As conflicting allegations of illegality and intrigue accumulate, this odyssey into the hidden underbelly of the Indian economic boom, becomes even more surreal as the three main characters try to unearth the elusive truth, and the filmmaker’s ethical stance towards his characters is put to the test as he tries to get his film ‘in the can’.
Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi
Director: Saba Dewan
63 min, 2006
Riya dances in the beer bars of Mumbai to make a living. The documentary follows her from her home in Delhi to Mumbai where hundreds of working class girls come in search of work and a future. Riya’s future is unpredictable and the present is marked with its own difficulties. The police harass her family in Delhi, there is constant pressure from her agent in Mumbai to attract more tips and the work itself is demanding. However, there are other girls to have fun with, there is money to dress well and then there are men… admirers promising the moon. The documentary is an intimate portrait of the everyday life of the girls, their agents and their neighbourhoods.
Figures of Thought
Director: Arun Khopkar
33 min, 1990
As three artists speak about the specifics of their thematic and structural quests, what emerges is an exposition on the nature of art itself. A film about the works of Bhupen Khakhar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram, Figures of Thought, is a philosophical inquiry into the formative impulses of these artists as a reflection on art practices. Each of the artists reveal, through their own personal predicaments with their subject matter, the inflections of form and content over each other and the emergent aesthetics of it. The film is structured to emphasize both, the characteristic style of each artist as well the thematic and formal conversations between them.
India Poised
Times of India
2 min (undated)
A short internet film put out by the Times of India, featuring Amitabh Bachchan, which gives the flavour of the Indian dream of progress and development, leaving behind the image of a poverty ridden country.
Invoking Justice (work in progress)
Director: Deepa Dhanraj, 2011
A group of rural and small-town Muslim women in South India set up their own Jamaat (community council) in 2003. As traditionally Jamaats can only be founded and run by men, this is an act of extraordinary challenge and courage. Dowry harassment, domestic violence, divorce, maintenance and property disputes shall no longer be judged by men.
Deepa Dhanraj follows the Jamaat’s growth in strength and legitimacy through case studies and hereby takes part in processes of calling for and listening to witness accounts. Questions concerning justice, belief and the practices of customary law are put forward.
Majma
Director: Rahul Roy
54 min, 2001
Aslam sells medicines for sexual problems on the pavements of Meena Bazar near Jama Masjid in Delhi. Khalifa Barkat presides over an akhara in the adjacent park and puts a group of young men through the moral and physical grind of wrestling. Through the park and the market pass hundreds of men every day. ‘Majma’ explores the instability of working class lives and its impact on male sexuality and gender relations.
My Migrant Soul (Porobashi Mon Amar)
Director: Yasmine Kabir
34 min, 2000
‘My Migrant Soul’ is about Shahjahan Babu, a young migrant worker from Bangladesh who left for Malaysia in search of work. Having sold only piece of property – and virtually mortgaging his life – the young man arrives in the host country to experience only disillusionment, misery and frustration. The film ends with tragic consequences for the protagonist of the film.
The film highlights the plight of the migrant worker in these times, and uses the story of one person to illustrate those of countless others who have suffered at the hands of those who have stood to profit from bartering lives.
Promotional film on a steel plant in Kalinga Nagar, Orissa by Tata
10 min, 2007
An in-house promotional film from the Tata steel company describing the benefits of its proposed steel plant at Kalinga Nagar, Orissa.
Something Like a War
Director: Deepa Dhanraj
52 min, 1991
‘Something Like a War’ examines India’s national Family Planning programme from the perspective of women, who are its primary targets. The programme, launched in 1952, was formulated in collaboration with Western population control experts.
The film traces the history of the family planning programme and exposes the cynicism, corruption and brutality, which characterises its implementation. It also questions the ethics of internationally funded contraceptive research, which uses Indian women as guinea pigs.
As the women discuss their status, sexuality, fertility control and health, it is clear that in the absence of inputs such as education, health care, land reform, employment opportunities, social security and improvement in women’s status the program in their words is “reducing the poor not poverty.
The Advocate
Director: Deepa Dhanraj
126 min, 2007
The name of K. G. Kannabiran is synonymous with the founding of the human rights and civil liberties movement in India. The film as part biography and partly history of the times attempts to document the remarkable contribution of Mr Kannabiran in challenging the Indian State to uphold the rule of law in institutions of governance, justice and political praxis. As president of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee from 1978 to 1994, he brought its work international recognition. As a founding member of the Concerned Citizens Committee he acted in the capacity of a mediator in the peace talks between the Andhra Pradesh Government and the Maoist Peoples War Group. He was elected national president of the Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties in 1994, a position he continued to hold till October 2009.
The Burning of the Stomach
Director: Laura Bear
20 min, 2011
This film is an exploration of the relationship between men and the ships they are building on the banks of the Hooghly river in Kolkata for a Norwegian shipping firm. Through the songs of Shankar Das, a khalasie, and his images from the yard we learn the meanings of death, decay, endurance and the creative act of work. At the heart of his account is the Hooghly River as a manifestation of flow and of the productive and destructive force of global capital.
The City Beautiful (Sunder Nagri)
Director: Rahul Roy
78 min, 2003
‘Sunder Nagri’ (Beautiful City) is a small working class colony on the margins of India’s capital city, Delhi. Most families residing here come from a community of weavers. The last ten years have seen a gradual disintegration of the handloom tradition of this community under the globalisation regime. The families have to cope with change as well as reinvent themselves to eke out a living.
Radha and Bal Krishan are at a critical point in their relationship. Bal Krishan is underemployed and constantly cheated. They are in disagreement about Radha going out to work. However, through all their ups and downs they retain the ability to laugh.
Shakuntla and Hira Lal hardly communicate. They live under one roof with their children but are locked in their own sense of personal tragedies.
The Last Rites
Director: Yasmine Kabir
17 min, 2008
‘The Last Rites’ is an allegorical portrayal of the agony of hard labour. Unlike a traditional narrative, the film relies on its images to tell its story.
The silent film depicts the ship breaking yards of Chittagong, Bangladesh – a final destination for ships that are too old to ply the oceans any longer. Every year, hundreds of ships are sent to these yards in Bangladesh. And every year, thousands of people keep coming in search of jobs in these yards. Risking their lives to save themselves from hunger, they breathe in asbestos dust and toxic waste. What emerges in a greater context is the tragedy of the human condition.
The Other Song
Director: Saba Dewan
120 min, 2009
In 1935, Rasoolan Bai the well known singer from Varanasi recorded for the gramophone a thumri that she would never sing again: My breasts are wounded, don’t throw flowers at me – a variation of her more famous song: My heart is wounded, don’t throw flowers at me. The 1935 recording, never to be repeated, faded from public memory and eventually got lost.
More than seventy years later the film travels through Varanasi, Lucknow and Muzzafarpur in Bihar to search for the forgotten song. This journey brings the film face to face with the enigmatic figure of the tawaif, courtesan, bai ji and the contested terrain of her art practice and lifestyle. To find the lost other song the film must understand the past and present of the tawaif and unravel the significant transitions that took place in late 19th and early 20th century around the control, censorship and moral policing of female sexualities and cultural expression.
Volume Zero: The Work of Charles Correa
Director: Arun Khopkar
59 min, 2008
‘Volume Zero’ is an hour-long video on the work and ideas of Charles Correa, one of world’s most important architects. It deals with his childhood, architectural training, formative years, and the paradigms underlying his large and complex architectural oeuvre spanning over five decades, as well as his pivotal role in addressing issues of urbanization in the Developing World. It uses first person narration by the filmmaker, combined with extended excerpts of interview with Correa, live action, stills, diagrams, animation and archival footage to open up the thought process that generate architectural space and form.
Why I am not BPL
Director: Ajay T. G.
10 min
People below the poverty line in India are entitled to a food subsidy but the system is often subverted so that the not so poor benefit and the poorest of all receive nothing. This short film shows the circumstance which deprives one desperately poor single mother of the help she should receive and badly needs.
Word within the Word (Sabad Nirantar)
Director: Rajula Shah
74 min, 2008
The film looks at how the Word, resonates in and resonates of ordinary lives across centuries. Beginning from an everyday cloudy monsoon morning in the city of Bhopal it travels to Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, (the hub of tribal India) also known as the second home of Pt. Kumar Gandharva, one of the greatest musicians of our time. Here within the fast altering fabric of a challenged rural life we encounter common people, age-caste-gender regardless, fighting hard to earn a square meal daily, yet keeping music alive at the bosom of a gnawing fate. Far beyond the scope of any intellectual resolve it is at once a refusal to die, and more significantly a bid to seize eternity from historic annihilation.
‘Word Within the Word’ is a crucial gateway to the India we are fast forgetting, one that is difficult to classify and categorise but simpler to understand if you hear its common folk talk. It is this human landscape within which one can aspire to come to terms with one’s contemporary dilemmas stemming from learned responses, fragmented dreams.
VIDEO INSTALLATION
The Warkari Cycle
Director: Lucia King
(48 min – time looped)
‘The Warkari Cycle’ is a music and dance-driven video installation made up of eight short inter-linked episodes. Following the footsteps of Maharashtrian pilgrims or ‘Warkaris’ who undertake this twenty-one day walk each year, they are celebrating the legacy of medieval sants (poet-saints) from their region. Around 1,000,000 pilgrims travel, sing and eat together crossing the Solapur district towards Pandharpur. Rather than being offered an informational commentary, the viewer is immersed into the event in this film. Each episode explores one environment of the pilgrimage as a living choreography centring on one of the significant sites that connects the pilgrims. From the mass dances at the temple of Tukaram to the quiet intimacy of songs sung by bards (or vaghyas) committed from birth to follow this movement, the pilgrimage is traced here in some of its more unexpected tributaries. Just as the event returns year after year to re-live the celebration, the film too is composed as a cycle of fragmentary insights. A poetic and dynamic interpretation.