Day 02, 7 Dec 2020
1) I Want My Father Back
Dir: Suma Josson; 50 min; Marathi with English subtitles; 2007; Doc; Retro I
Dir: Suma Josson; 50 min; Marathi with English subtitles; 2007; Doc; Retro I
(English version)
It is a documentary on the suicide of farmers in Vidarbha, Maharashtra.
2) Butterfly Stand Still
Dir: Suma Josson; 20 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2011
3) Famine 87
Dir : Sanjiv Shah; 52 min; Gujarati with Eng subtitles; 1987; India; Doc; Retro II
For centuries, the grasslands in the North- Western, in an otherwise arid region of Gujarat bordering Pakistan have been home to the Maldharis, a predominantly Muslim community of traditional cattle grazers who have a rich heritage of culture, art and music.
Fifty years after lndia's independence the entire pastoral community and their habitat is under threat of extinction from natural calamities and human intervention in the name of development. Traditional practices of survival have been disrupted; native knowledge and skills have been made redundant. In the fourth successive year of drought an entire population has been reduced to digging ditches and carrying mud - surviving on dole.
During this re-telling of peoples' histories, what emerges is an understanding of the larger causes of scarcities and famines. And the need to review the very processes of planning and development which have deprived not only the people of BANNl, but the dispossessed all over the world of the right to survive on their own terms.
A minister of the Govt. of India, or may be a leading politician of the time, was once being taken on a tour of the Jaisalmer district. Travelling for a while through the region and song the lush green Khadins, the water filled nadis, and the not-so-poor looking people, he kept on saying that this was not a 'registaan' ("ise registaan kahte ho?").
Apocryphal though the story may be, it succinctly illustrates the paradox that is the Thaar. A unique landmass that looks bleak and hostile with undulating sand dunes, lowly rock hills bereft of vegetation, saline marshes, and little vegetation, and yet supports a large human and animal population an moderate comfort. The documentary attempts to capture the spirit of the land and the people, who together have evolved into a rich, multifaceted society, and survived through centuries of droughts and scarcities. And the fate of the same land and people now, when the promise of modern science, knowledge and 'development' has brought them on the crossroads which lead into the unknown future
Redemption or destruction is the question. And which road to travel on, what direction to take?
A typical koothu performance is an all-night show in which performers wear elaborate makeup, costumes and wooden ornaments, and simultaneously sing, dance and act on stage. Koothu companies tour the countryside, often commissioned by villages to perform for several consecutive nights. Yet, in spite of its enduring rural popularity and because of its low-caste associations, koothu struggles to find place and patronage in urban art circles.
Who creates the binaries of folk and classical? Through the work of two koothu masters, P. Rajagopal and Sambandan Thambiran, the film delves into questions of representation and patronage of the art form while presenting its art and aesthetics.
Hockey in my Blood is a film about hockey in Coorg, told through the story of the Kodava Hockey Festival, a tournament played between the families of Coorg. Kodavas, the people of Coorg, are a martial-tribal community known for strong ties to land and family.
Every year, players from over 200 families come together to play in their own hockey tournament – The Kodava Hockey Festival. There is no bar on age or gender. The only rule of forming a team is that all members must be from the same family. Young boys and girls, fathers, uncles, mothers, professionals and even former Olympic heroes, are all players. With the families playing for bragging rights for the rest of the year, victories are hard fought and competition can get heated. At the end of the month-long event, there will be just one winning team but many winners, the sport and the sense of community not least among them.
Welcome to The Kodava Hockey Festival!
In Argentina, every 23 hours there is the death of a woman, because of gender violence, a particular form of “discipline” that certain men exercise against women when they feel that they do not comply with the mandates that “women” – stereotype of the feminine – should comply. A female corpse every 23 hours. This is one of the most serious naturalized everyday situations; embarrassing for the victims, denied by the victimizers. How to account for this emergency? How many times can you see the blows, the statistics, the bruised bodies without the sensibility falling asleep?
8) Paper Worlds of Latif Kazbekov
Dir: Sofya Leonidova; 20.53 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia; 2019; Doc
Portrait of Kazakh-Russian painter Latif Kazbekov. We’ll meet him in the studio - the place where outer world and inner world are mixed together. Where paintings as a result are less important than process itself. Paper reliefs, thoughtful paintings, artisanal paper-making and endless questions. An attempt to look into origins of art and answer the questing: where do paper worlds come from?
9) Architecture of the Blockade
Dir: Maxim Yakubson; 80 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Doc
The documentary film tells about the feat of inhabitants of Leningrad, the work of architects and alpinists, the disguise of the city and the preservation of monuments. Thanks to the unique chronicle, drawings and photographs, eyewitness accounts and analysis of historians, fragments and motifs of the play "Hecatomb. The Siege Diary" the film rediscovers the events of the terrible and holy days of the siege of Leningrad.
10) Dancing Lion of Mazgaon
Dir: Ankeet Pareek, Chinar Mehta, Timmayo Thumra, Yaniam; India; Doc
Set in the backdrop of the Chinese New year, the film explores the associations between the Kwan Kung temple in Mazgaon, and the Chinese community of Mumbai. Once a source of many cultures, the small community now comes together on various occasions in this cityscape. While Mumbai once boasted of a thriving “Chinatown” in Kamathipura, ethnic Chinese people have migrated abroad for many reasons; leading to a sparse population in a place which once many Chinese families called their home. That said, Albert Tham has been looking after the temple for many years, and has lived in the city for almost 4 decades. Alex Yi, from Kanpur, has recently found his footing in the city. As Lili returns to India, where she spent her childhood, after 57 years, she talks of exclusions and persecutions that are as relevant today as they were in 1962.
11) Der Krieg in Mir
Dir: Sebastian Heinzel; 83 min; German, Russian with English subtitles; Germany, Switzerland; 2019; Doc
It’s 2018. Russia has just elected its President. A new, old President. Nothing will change during the next six years, and, at first glance, you just have to accept it. This is the way most people think, whilst there are those who feel otherwise. This film is about them. Experienced activists support the youth-led protests against the Russian irremovable crony authorities.
13) Selflessly Yours
Dir: Navya Sahai Bhatnagar; 2.48 min; English; 2019; India; Doc
In this video feature, we tell the story of Manimegalai, the first woman Panchayat Head of Poompuhar Village, in Nagapattinam district of Coastal Tamil Nadu. A popular social worker, 68year old Manimegalai remained a Panchayat head for ten long years. Despite deep patriarchal prejudices, she worked selflessly for her village.
14) CHAK CHAGE IMA
Dir : JENISH SALAM; 4.50 min; Manipuri with Eng subtitles; India; 2020; Short film
The storyline is based on the life hurdles faced by a poor mother and her 4 years old son during the ongoing lockdown period imposed due to covid-19 pandemic.
15) THE WAY HOME
Dir: Elena Khimyalyaynen; 16:15 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Short film
It is a reflection film about a human life lost in a series of monotonous everyday life. The character has only one way to hear themselves in this nonsense. Perhaps it is from this step that a human being is commencing, and life becomes meaningful.
16) LIPSTICK
Dir : Svetlana Yashina; 01:19 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Short film
A woman takes a break from a party and hides in the bathroom only to find a frightening reflection in the mirror. Having overcome the first surge of fear, she finds an unexpected solution to the problem.
17) Triplet
Dir: Vadim Zaytsev; 20 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Short film
Three brothers travel to their ancestral home to visit their elderly mother who was dying. Brothers find adoption certificate of a boy, but the name and date of birth are impossible to read, due to it being burned. In order to find the truth and discover which one of them was adopted, they compare their childhood memories…
18) BALI-TO-FUN
Dir : Jeanne Desire; 20:06 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Indonesia, Russia; 2020; Short film
Anya comes to Bali for a women's workshop where she has to practice her seduction skills, and bring a man to the final day of the workshop to get a certificate.
19) Tisbea
Dir : Israel Ahumada; 11 min.; Spanish with Eng subtitles; Mexico; 2020; Short film
The process of a young actress who, based on her own emotional experience, gives life to the character of Tisbea in the play The Trickster of Seville by Tirso de Molina. Tisbea is a transdisciplinary experiment that combines theater, sound art and cinematography.
I have tried to use this film as a tool to explore Dombari community from a point of view of an 85 year old lady. My approach during the making of this film was to give an inside view of the Dombari community to the society. Shantabai (85) is a member of this community who has lived her life contributing and preserving the art of Dombari khel (street performance), a performing art that is on the verge of extinction.
Shantabai remains one of the last remaining proponents of this dying art form. I have attempted to explore this community through her perspective that spans over 80 years of lived experience.
22) NEELA KUTHIRA (The Blue Horse)
Dir : Himanshu Singh; 12.49 min; Malayalam, Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2019; India; Short film
The film centers around Krishnan- a nine year old boy whose grandmother has just come to visit him in Pune from Kerala. The grandmother agrees to tell him a story from Mahabharata.
The boy is fascinated with the story of Barbarik, a prince from Mahabharata who could end the war in a minute but was not allowed by Lord Krishna to fight the war. The boy hunts around this complex and fascinating myth of Barbarik in real world who he believes owns a blue horse and has lotus marks under his feet.
The boy creates his own world and wanders to find Barbarik’s blue horse. The way myth and religion drive our lives in India, Krishnan’s life is also driven by the myth as told to him by his grandmother and he believes that reaching Barbarik would help him solve the problems between his father and the mother. The blue horse becomes the metaphor of the little boy’s
view of the world.
At a point the myth and reality of the little boy collide.
23) Returning to the First Beat
Dir: Surabhi Sharma; 85 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2017; India; Doc
Phir se samm pe aana strives to experience the space for Hindustani classical music in the city. The film revisits the sites clustered in and around Girgaon where music was taught and performed. It seeks to understand the musical legacy of this neighbourhood, even as it reimagines the documentary mode. This film ‘listens’ to architectural structures in an attempt to reflect on the deep history of this practice. In narrativising the love of music that took shape in this neighbourhood we also seek to experience ‘film time’ rather than evoke a time past or record the present. The film seeks repetition and cyclical time to imagine a narrative on music. Phir se…is an opportunity to experience an interior, almost intimate practice of the musical form.
24) L for…
Dir: Bharati Kapadia; 13.13 min; English; 2017; India; Short film
Spoken Word is an oral performance art form that focuses on the aesthetics of word play, rhythm, intonation and voice inflection.
The text for ‘L FOR....’ written by Bharati Kapadia, is an oral performance piece founded on the spoken word poetry form. It engages the A FOR APPLE phonics strategy with which children are taught alphabet shapes and sounds and the recognition of objects associated with a particular alphabet.
L FOR... explores the nuances of the word LOVE by taking us on an expedition across the letters L, O, V, E. Through two performative formats, that of the text body: text animation and that of the human body: sign language performance, the different words represented by each of the four letters resonate with variegated meaning-attributes that have come to be associated with the word love within the contemporary social milieu.
L FOR... is my way of countering the present day despondency pervading our social environment and create space for joy and playfulness to reclaim their existence in our daily lives.
2) Butterfly Stand Still
Dir: Suma Josson; 20 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2011
It is a portrayal of a 55-year-old woman who has modeled for art students and artists for 30 years.
3) Famine 87
Dir : Sanjiv Shah; 52 min; Gujarati with Eng subtitles; 1987; India; Doc; Retro II
Fifty years after lndia's independence the entire pastoral community and their habitat is under threat of extinction from natural calamities and human intervention in the name of development. Traditional practices of survival have been disrupted; native knowledge and skills have been made redundant. In the fourth successive year of drought an entire population has been reduced to digging ditches and carrying mud - surviving on dole.
During this re-telling of peoples' histories, what emerges is an understanding of the larger causes of scarcities and famines. And the need to review the very processes of planning and development which have deprived not only the people of BANNl, but the dispossessed all over the world of the right to survive on their own terms.
4)Thar
Dir:Sanjiv Shah; 60min; English;1995; India; Doc; Retro II
Dir:Sanjiv Shah; 60min; English;1995; India; Doc; Retro II
The journey continued and he kept on castigating the local people for insisting on calling the land a 'barren desert'. The sun climbed on and lunch was taken. The journey resumed and the temperatures outside rose to unbearable limits. The minister desired the cavalcade to stop for a brief rest. But where were they to stop. For miles on end there were no trees and no shade. All was dry; barren and bleak. And one of the local persons accompanying the minister said, "Sab, ye registaan hai!"
Apocryphal though the story may be, it succinctly illustrates the paradox that is the Thaar. A unique landmass that looks bleak and hostile with undulating sand dunes, lowly rock hills bereft of vegetation, saline marshes, and little vegetation, and yet supports a large human and animal population an moderate comfort. The documentary attempts to capture the spirit of the land and the people, who together have evolved into a rich, multifaceted society, and survived through centuries of droughts and scarcities. And the fate of the same land and people now, when the promise of modern science, knowledge and 'development' has brought them on the crossroads which lead into the unknown future
Redemption or destruction is the question. And which road to travel on, what direction to take?
5) Koothu
Dir: Sandhya Kumar; 52 min; Eng, Tamil with Eng subtitles; 2018; Doc; Filmmaker in Focus
Dir: Sandhya Kumar; 52 min; Eng, Tamil with Eng subtitles; 2018; Doc; Filmmaker in Focus
In many villages in Tamil Nadu, a theatre tradition still links people with a past. Closely connected with religion and caste rituals, koothu brings to life stories about gods, demigods, kings and demons from the Indian epics.
A typical koothu performance is an all-night show in which performers wear elaborate makeup, costumes and wooden ornaments, and simultaneously sing, dance and act on stage. Koothu companies tour the countryside, often commissioned by villages to perform for several consecutive nights. Yet, in spite of its enduring rural popularity and because of its low-caste associations, koothu struggles to find place and patronage in urban art circles.
Who creates the binaries of folk and classical? Through the work of two koothu masters, P. Rajagopal and Sambandan Thambiran, the film delves into questions of representation and patronage of the art form while presenting its art and aesthetics.
6) Hockey in My Blood
Dir : Sandhya Kumar; 52 min; Eng, Kodava Takk with Eng subtitles; 2015; Doc; Filmmaker in Focus
Dir : Sandhya Kumar; 52 min; Eng, Kodava Takk with Eng subtitles; 2015; Doc; Filmmaker in Focus
Every year, players from over 200 families come together to play in their own hockey tournament – The Kodava Hockey Festival. There is no bar on age or gender. The only rule of forming a team is that all members must be from the same family. Young boys and girls, fathers, uncles, mothers, professionals and even former Olympic heroes, are all players. With the families playing for bragging rights for the rest of the year, victories are hard fought and competition can get heated. At the end of the month-long event, there will be just one winning team but many winners, the sport and the sense of community not least among them.
Welcome to The Kodava Hockey Festival!
7) Linea 137
Dir : Lucía Vassallo ; 82 min; Spanish with Eng subtitles; Argentina; 2019; Doc
“Phone Line 137” portrays the lives of 4 social workers and psychologists who decide to be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to assist, help and accompany women who suffer cases of gender, sexual and family violence within the City of Buenos Aires.
8) Paper Worlds of Latif Kazbekov
Dir: Sofya Leonidova; 20.53 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia; 2019; Doc
9) Architecture of the Blockade
Dir: Maxim Yakubson; 80 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Doc
The documentary film tells about the feat of inhabitants of Leningrad, the work of architects and alpinists, the disguise of the city and the preservation of monuments. Thanks to the unique chronicle, drawings and photographs, eyewitness accounts and analysis of historians, fragments and motifs of the play "Hecatomb. The Siege Diary" the film rediscovers the events of the terrible and holy days of the siege of Leningrad.
10) Dancing Lion of Mazgaon
Dir: Ankeet Pareek, Chinar Mehta, Timmayo Thumra, Yaniam; India; Doc
The dancing lion in Mazgaon is a tribute to the many cultures that call Mumbai their home, and also to those which are persecuted. In spite of this, there is a sense of faith that seems to transcend identities and ways of living. The film attempts to weave together stories of the present and the past, hinting at the complex ways in which identities are formed.
11) Der Krieg in Mir
Dir: Sebastian Heinzel; 83 min; German, Russian with English subtitles; Germany, Switzerland; 2019; Doc
How much soldier is still alive in me? New research from epigenetics indicates that enormous stress experiences change the genetic make-up. German filmmaker Sebastian Heinzel explores the effects of WWII on his family and follows his grandfather’s path from Germany to Belarus. He discovers unexpected connections to his own past and his war dreams,which have been haunting him for years. Against the background of the global refugee crisis and international tensions, the film tells of the long-term consequences of the war and our task to deal with it in order to make healing and reconciliation possible.
12) Pro geroev i ludei
Dir: Maria Muskevich; 90 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2019; Doc
Dir: Maria Muskevich; 90 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2019; Doc
13) Selflessly Yours
Dir: Navya Sahai Bhatnagar; 2.48 min; English; 2019; India; Doc
14) CHAK CHAGE IMA
Dir : JENISH SALAM; 4.50 min; Manipuri with Eng subtitles; India; 2020; Short film
15) THE WAY HOME
Dir: Elena Khimyalyaynen; 16:15 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Short film
16) LIPSTICK
Dir : Svetlana Yashina; 01:19 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Short film
17) Triplet
Dir: Vadim Zaytsev; 20 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Short film
Three brothers travel to their ancestral home to visit their elderly mother who was dying. Brothers find adoption certificate of a boy, but the name and date of birth are impossible to read, due to it being burned. In order to find the truth and discover which one of them was adopted, they compare their childhood memories…
18) BALI-TO-FUN
Dir : Jeanne Desire; 20:06 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Indonesia, Russia; 2020; Short film
Anya comes to Bali for a women's workshop where she has to practice her seduction skills, and bring a man to the final day of the workshop to get a certificate.
19) Tisbea
Dir : Israel Ahumada; 11 min.; Spanish with Eng subtitles; Mexico; 2020; Short film
20) The Swings
Dir : Anastasiia Ostapenko; 13 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020; Short film
Roma is 6 years old. His parents are about to divorce. After being asked if he want to stay with mom or dad, Roma becomes silent. His inner feelings that very much remind of swings, Roma expresses in his drawings.
21) Shantabai
Dir : Pratiik Gupta; 11.43 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2019; India; Doc
Dir : Pratiik Gupta; 11.43 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2019; India; Doc
Shantabai remains one of the last remaining proponents of this dying art form. I have attempted to explore this community through her perspective that spans over 80 years of lived experience.
22) NEELA KUTHIRA (The Blue Horse)
Dir : Himanshu Singh; 12.49 min; Malayalam, Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2019; India; Short film
The boy is fascinated with the story of Barbarik, a prince from Mahabharata who could end the war in a minute but was not allowed by Lord Krishna to fight the war. The boy hunts around this complex and fascinating myth of Barbarik in real world who he believes owns a blue horse and has lotus marks under his feet.
The boy creates his own world and wanders to find Barbarik’s blue horse. The way myth and religion drive our lives in India, Krishnan’s life is also driven by the myth as told to him by his grandmother and he believes that reaching Barbarik would help him solve the problems between his father and the mother. The blue horse becomes the metaphor of the little boy’s
view of the world.
At a point the myth and reality of the little boy collide.
23) Returning to the First Beat
Dir: Surabhi Sharma; 85 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2017; India; Doc
The metropolitan transformation of Bombay in the nineteenth and twentieth century kept time with changes in the practice and pedagogy of Hindustani classical music in the city. With the decline of the princely states traditional systems of patronage began to unravel. Musicians, among others, began to gravitate to the rapidly growing colonial city of Bombay, in search of new sponsors. This led, in turn, to the formation of a distinctive audience for Hindustani sangeet in the city – one not limited to the princely courts and exclusive homes of the aristocracy. Girgaon was a part of the native town of the colonial city and was one of the key neighbourhoods where the singers, the patrons and the audiences lived.
Phir se samm pe aana strives to experience the space for Hindustani classical music in the city. The film revisits the sites clustered in and around Girgaon where music was taught and performed. It seeks to understand the musical legacy of this neighbourhood, even as it reimagines the documentary mode. This film ‘listens’ to architectural structures in an attempt to reflect on the deep history of this practice. In narrativising the love of music that took shape in this neighbourhood we also seek to experience ‘film time’ rather than evoke a time past or record the present. The film seeks repetition and cyclical time to imagine a narrative on music. Phir se…is an opportunity to experience an interior, almost intimate practice of the musical form.
24) L for…
Dir: Bharati Kapadia; 13.13 min; English; 2017; India; Short film
The text for ‘L FOR....’ written by Bharati Kapadia, is an oral performance piece founded on the spoken word poetry form. It engages the A FOR APPLE phonics strategy with which children are taught alphabet shapes and sounds and the recognition of objects associated with a particular alphabet.
L FOR... explores the nuances of the word LOVE by taking us on an expedition across the letters L, O, V, E. Through two performative formats, that of the text body: text animation and that of the human body: sign language performance, the different words represented by each of the four letters resonate with variegated meaning-attributes that have come to be associated with the word love within the contemporary social milieu.
L FOR... is my way of countering the present day despondency pervading our social environment and create space for joy and playfulness to reclaim their existence in our daily lives.
Dir : S. Shanmuganathan
This film revolves around the life and art of the Devadasi alias Devaradiyaar, who is still striving to keep her tradition of Sadir dance alive. Smt Viralimalai Muthukannammal, the only remnant of the glorious past of the Devadasi art form Sadir which is an ancient dance form, a precursor to the more popular Bharatanatyam which in itself in today's form is an appropriation of the Devadasi-Nattuvanar heritage.
26) Laxmi Vilas
Dir :Soma Sundaram
It is true that in a patriarchal society the torture of women is a permanent plague.
The voice for feminism also speaks to the fact that a jug disappears like a drop of milk in poison.
The voice for feminism also speaks to the fact that a jug disappears like a drop of milk in poison.
27) Paarvai
Dir: Dinesh Kumar
The story of trying to straighten out a patriarchal angle
28) Trapped
Dir: Fazeel
A story that illustrates the plight of a drug addict.
29) Legaly Raped
29) Legaly Raped
Dir : Charulatha B Rangarajan
It speaks together of patriarchal misery and female emancipation.
30) Neeli Raag (True Blue)
Dir: Swati Dandekar; 85 min; Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, Gujarati, English; Subtitled in English; 2018
Indigo is not just a colour, it never was... it was wealth, it was mystique, it was colonialism, tyranny and protest. It made history, but itself fell prey to the events and processes of time, until one day it seemed to disappear.
As the world begins to demand natural dyes once again, it is back in the spot light. The stubborn dreamers who refused to forget their craft feel vindicated, but the world that once nurtured this difficult and capricious colour is no more.
Traversing the verdant monsoon of Tamil Nadu, the earthy expanses of springtime Telangana, and the wintry desert of Kachchh, Neeli Raag is an attempt to tell the story of indigo as it is practised in India today.
1) Indian films
2) International films
3) Retro I - Suma Josson
4) Retro II - Sanjay Shah
5) Filmmaker in Focus - Sandhya Kumar
6) Films from Tamilnadu
7) Director's Cut
8) Student films
Films will be available from 12 am to 12 am for 24 hours!
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