22nd Madurai Film Festival 2020 : Documentaries from India

22nd Madurai Film Festival 2020 : 6-10 Dec / Online Event

Documentaries from India


1) Sikhirini Mwsanai (Dance of the Butterfly)
Dir. Subasri Krishnan; 65 min; Bodo, Hindi and English with Eng subtitles; India ; 2019





Sikhirni Mwsanai, literally, dance of the butterfly in Bodo, expresses the delicate almost fragile rhythms of traditional Bodo music and dance. The film traces the journey of "Sifung Harimu Afad" a cultural troupe of young adult Bodos as they rediscover those rhythms in their efforts to revive live music and dance performance in Chirang district, Assam. Using traditional musical instruments like the Kham, Serja and Sifung, the group attempts to foreground Bodo identity through disappearing cultural forms.


2) Noor Islam
Dir : Devshree Nath; 20 min; Assamese, Bengali with Eng subtitles; India; 2019




The documentary traces the struggles of one such native who is slowly losing his identity and eventually is deemed as an illegal immigrant. The film tries to explore his state of mind; of a person who is on the verge of losing his nationality and consequently losing almost everything he has.

His broken hopes cause a turbulence in his mind whilst the serene beauty of Assam and his humble lifestyle paint a contrast against this inner tempest.

3) Holy Rights
Dir : Farha Khatun; 53 min; Urdu with Eng subtitles; India; 2020





Safia, a deeply religious Muslim woman from Bhopal in Central India, driven by her belief that because of the patriarchal mindset of the interpreters of Sharia, Muslim women are denied equality and justice in the community. She joins a program that trains women as Qazis, (Muslim clerics who interpret and administer the personal law), which is traditionally a male preserve. The film documents her journey as she struggles and negotiates through hitherto uncharted territory, exploring the tensions that arise when women try to change the status quo and take control of narratives that so deeply affect their lives.


4) Udaan
Dir : Poorvi Priya, Priya Singh, Ritika Gupta, Varun Pandey, Vishruti Saraf ; 18.34 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; India; 2019




Udaan, the movie, is based in Rafiq Nagar, Govandi, one of the most under- developed regions of Mumbai. It focuses on the issue of dignified livelihoods for marginalized women in Mumbai slums. Through the protagonists Johra and Fareeda, the documentary wades into the daily lives of women, issues of collectivization, and the way forward.


5) Selflessly Yours
Dir: Navya Sahai Bhatnagar; 2.48 min; English; 2019; India




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, 68-year old Manimegalai remained a Panchayat head for ten long years. Despite deep patriarchal prejudices, she worked selflessly for her village.


6) Via Frequency
Dir: Susanna Cherian; 4.07 min; English; 2019; India

The Community radio at Vizhundamavadi acts as a means of informing and mobilizing the coastal communities in times of natural disasters. During Cyclone Gaja, the Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli played a crucial role in providing relief information and in aiding the locals to safety. The Radio has its own rural reporters. The radio station which is 3kms from the coast, does not cover just local issues but has also emerged as an opportunity for young local talent to get recognized through sharing their music and stories. Thus, even when there is no calamity, the radio station serves as a medium of educating and empowering the masses.

7) Two Autumns in Wyszogród
Dir: Amit Mahanti & Ruchika Negi; 60.03 min; Polish with Eng subtitles; India; 2020





In 2015, the wreckage of a Soviet Red Army plane shot down by the Nazis at the end of World War II was excavated from a tributary of the Vistula River, near the town of Wyszogród in Poland. The Soviet origin of the plane drew a lot of attention because of Poland’s tenuous relationship with Russia (and erstwhile USSR) and the continuing debate over its communist legacy. Was the wreckage a symbol of Poland’s war-torn past that should be commemorated, or a bitter reminder of another nation’s domination and control? What did the wreckage mean for Wyszogród and why did it choose to house it?


8) They are Dying
Dir : Dhananjay Bhawalekar; 28.37 min; Rajasthani, Hindi with Eng subtitles; India; 2020

"They are dying....let us preserve them before their extinction".... a valid people's linguistic survey denotes that India boasts 780 languages, majority of which are unknown...let us conserve them through pictures and sounds...let us capture them in lenses to save dying cultures.

9) Living Dreams
Dir : Ritwik Baiju; 29 min; Malayalam with Eng subtitles; India; 2019





Jeevan, a software engineer by profession suffers from Osteogenesis Imperfecta. The documentary chronicles the life of Jeevan, who resides in Bengaluru, India and his life story narrated by his parents and Jeevan himself. The film depicts and narrates the endearing story of a family who has fought all the odds to bring up a child of such a condition to be a jovial and strong person. Several stages of Jeevan’s life, from his birth to his present life is shown in nonlinear pattern.


10) Navi Mumbai Navi Begari
Dir : Aishwarya Vasudev, Subodh Minto, Meghna Nandy and Ankit Pareek; 19.50 min; Marathi, Hindi and English; 2018





The Nakas of Navi Mumbai are an embodiment of the bustling vibrancy that defines the city. They happen to be the site of many different kinds of economic activities on a daily basis one of which is the recruitment of informal construction workers for various developmental projects and construction work happening around the city. The film follows the lives of the construction workers vis-à-vis the nakas and explores the Nakas as a space.


11) Stop Acid Attack
Dir : Farha Khatun; 1.33 min; No dialogue; 2019





The film depicts how a beautiful life can end with the heinous act of throwing acid on somebody.


12) Chal Ga Heera
Dir: Manasi, Prakriti, Prashant, Sreya, Tanushree; 13.10 min; Hindi and Marathi with Eng subtitles; 2019





The film based in Mankhurd follows the journey of two women – Ajuma Bi Shaikh (Khala) and Ratna Mane along with the efforts by the women of the community. Patra Chawl, Transit Camp and Bheem Nagar are settlements based in Mumbai’s M-Ward, and are always at the risk of demolition. The women of the community have brought their own issues to the fore, and make attempts to address these through a union or sangathan that has been formed by their collective efforts.


13) Tabdeeli
Dir: Anmol Saini, Anna Binu, Rishika Revo, Sankarsan Behera, Vyshakh Balachandran; 24 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2019


Tabdeeli, which means transformation, showcases the journey of two women community leaders working towards eradicating the social evil of domestic violence against women and girls. Working with CORO (Committee for Resource Organisation), Kausar Parveen and Sadiqa Shaikh have been engaged with the predominantly Muslim community residing in Kamla Raman Nagar of Baiganwadi area in Mumbai. Through their tireless approach of rescue, counselling and rehabilitation for survivors and their families; they have not just helped women within the community but also themselves.


14) Zindabad
Dir: Kavya, Srishti, Lavanya, Apoorva, Ajay; 14.21 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2019




Zindabad traces the Jeevan Bachao Andolan through the eyes of Anita Dhole, a former resident of Vidyavhar and one of the leading figures in the movement. After their houses were demolished by the BMC, Anita along with other residents was rehabilitated to Mahul. Located in close proximity to a large complex of chemical factories, residents of Mahul have been facing serious health concerns resulting in over 88 deaths in the past 5 years. Protesting against the violation of their basic rights Anita has been living on the footpath opposite the original site of demolition for over 365 days.

15) An Inconvenient Development
Dir: Ajay, Anagha, Kavya, Prakriti, Sreya; 17.01 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2020


The land that Aarey forest stands on has been contested for a long time through various forms of reclamation, occupation and land use change.The most recent dialogue surrounding Aarey is one of urban protest – following the axing of more than 2000 trees by the MMRCL for the construction of a Metro car shed at Aarey. The film explores ideas surrounding the invisibilisation of the lives of indigenous people, and the unchecked dominance of urbanity and urban development.


16) Love in Bombay
Dir: Anmol Saini, Isha Srivastava, Priya Singh, Priyanshu Pandey, Rishika Revo, Vishruti Saraf; 23 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2020




Love in Bombay, as the title says, explores the existence of romantic love in the metropolitan city of Mumbai. This city of dreams, as it is famously called, is known for its larger-than-life depiction of romance in Bollywood and for its high-rise buildings that define the city as a progressive metropolitan. But in this beautiful city that never sleeps, one that has space for all, does love stand a chance to exist? Are the people of aamchi Mumbai free to love and express their love romantically?


17) Sharamjeevi
Dir: Tarun Bhartiya; 43.50 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2020




SHRAMJEEVI narrates the hopes and tragedies of the working class lives in Kapasehra village, one of the largest settlements of migrant workers in India.


18) Bamboo Ballads
Dir: Sajid Naduthody; 29.49 min; Malayalam with Eng subtitles; 2020

It is the story of a school student Naina Febin who uses music to conserve her favorite plant, Bamboo. She plants bamboo saplings in every available space. She distributes bamboo saplings to the families in her neighborhood. Naina is writing a book on bamboo. She has formed a bamboo music band that uses instruments only made out of bamboo.


19) Far from the Madding Crowd
Dir: Abeer Khan; 17.31 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles

It revolves around a mad-man and his life in Mumbai rains. The title is based on Thomas Hardy's novel - Far from the Madding Crowd. It's an illustration depicting that sanity is subjective. It is about people who are mad enough to live by themselves in this congested world.


20) KAFIR
Dir: Remya; 5.32 min; Malayalam with Eng subtitles; 2019

Kafir is a docu-fiction that explores the Kappiri myth of Fort Kochi, Kerala. In the film, an attempt to dig the real history behind African slaves brought in by the Portuguese is made. How a slave from Africa became the savior spirit of Fort Kochi is the question the story teller tries to crack open. In short, it's all about History, Myth, and Mystery behind the Kappirimuthappan of Fort Kochi.

22nd Madurai Film Festival 2020 : International Documentaries

22nd Madurai Film Festival 2020

6-10 Dec, Online Film Festival

International Documentaries

1) La conquista de las ruinas
Dir. Eduardo Gómez; 88 min; Spanish with Eng subtitles; Argentina, Bolivia; 2020

THE CONQUEST OF THE RUINS shows the unknown side of the expansion of cities that endangers our future. Paleontologists. Quarry workers. Works in construction and private neighborhoods. The earth unites and separates them all, and each one has an interpretation of what this world is and how it should be inhabited.

2) Katya I Vasya idut v shkolu
Dir. Yulia Vishnevets ; 90 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020

LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE? Two young intellectuals, Katya and Vassya, come to a small industrial town to work as teachers. They want to change the system of scholastic education and the social situation in difficult regions. The school is a closed conservative world, where obedience and discipline are of the highest value. Young teachers discover that  nationalism, sexism and homophobia are typical for their new environment. Children see the school as a prison and are completely indifferent to any new ideas. During one school year we observe attempts of our protagonists to bring new practices into the system. Young teachers try to speak with children about feminism, human rights and Russian politics, but the system pushes them out, and a comedy turns into a drama.

3) Ancestral Code
Dir. Volodymyr Lutskiy; 70 min; Ukrainian, Belorussian with Eng subtitles; Ukraine ; 2020

Documentary film «Ancestral Code» is a research of the origins of the Ukrainian people, the search for its identity through the study of the melodism of Slavic ethnographic heritage. Now many talk about brotherhood, spiritual intimacy, affinity. We want to analyze the connection between the neighboring peoples of Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus and Poland through music and folklore.

4) Stupa
Dir: Kirill Nenashev; 75 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2019

The film is about Konstantin Stupin (or just Stupa) – a rock-n-roll musician from a small Russian town Oryol. At the end of the USSR era Stupa, being a school student, decided to do music. He became a leader of the band Nochnaya Trost. Internal rock-n-roll protest and the height of unfavourable for Russia years – the 90-s – constantly interrupted Stupa’s creative career. He used drugs, was in prison 4 times. After getting out of it he always did music again. On of his songs was shown to The Exploited and legendary Scots named Stupa the best punk of Russia. Though Stupa didn’t consider himself a punk. Today there are more than 60 mln. views on his channel, but Stupa won’t know about it. He went down in history as a real underground musician who played in European style of classic rock-n-roll, punk and heavy metal, but who got through a Russian life.

5)  Linea 137
Dir : Lucía Vassallo ; 82 min; Spanish with Eng subtitles; Argentina; 2019

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? “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.

6) Paper Worlds of Latif Kazbekov
Dir: Sofya Leonidova; 20.53 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia; 2019

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?

7) Architecture of the Blockade (Dr: Maxim Yakubson; Russia)
Dir: Maxim Yakubson; 80 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020

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.

8) Der Krieg in Mir
Dir: Sebastian Heinzel; 83 min; German, Russian with English subtitles; Germany, Switzerland; 2019

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.

9) Der nackte König
Dir: Andreas Hoessli; 108 min; Polish-Farsi-English-German with Eng subtitles; Germany, Poland, Switzerland; 2019

THE REVOLT LIBERATES US FROM OUR OWN EGO 1979, Revolution in Iran.1980, Revolution in Poland. The fall of the Shah, the “King of Kings” in Iran, mass strikes and the “Solidarnosc” movement in Poland. What happened in the minds of the young women and men who were involved in the revolutions at the time? What happened to them when the revolution was suppressed or – as in Iran – when a religious-authoritarian elite took power? 

«The revolt liberates us from our own ego, from the ego of everyday life, which suddenly seems small, trivial and alien to us», – Ryszard Kapuscinski, journalist

10) Pro geroev i ludei
Dir: Maria Muskevich; 90 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2019

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.

11) Kunashir
Dir: Vladimir Kozlov; 71; Russian with Eng subtitles; France; 2019

Kunashir, one of the main islands of the Kuril Archipelago, situated 16 kilometres from Japan, was occupied by the Soviet army in 1945. A year later, after a short period of cohabitation, 17000 Japanese and Ainus who were living in the Kurils and in Sakhalin were deported to the island of Hokkaido. Since that time Japan has demanded the return of the Kuril Islands.  A peace treaty between the two countries has not been signed to date.

12) Pena
Dir: Ilya Povolotskiy; 85 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2019

SUBPOLAR COWBOYS OCCUPY THE RUINS OF EMPIRE ‘Froth’ depicts the customs and everyday life on the coast of the Barents Sea. At the heart of the narrative are the stories of three ordinary people. The characters are united by an incredible blend of humility, inherent rebelliousness, a very specific moral code, and attitude towards life. Nowhere except for these hills and severe sea can they find peace, while they hustle through the days and the waves making froth.

13) El Padre Medico
Dir: Vytautas Puidokas; 102 min; Portuguese-Spanish-German-French-Lithuanian; Brazil, Lithuania; 2019

WHO ARE YOU – THE LOCAL HERO OF AMAZONIAN JUNGLE AND SAVIOR OR BRUTAL ABUSER AND MURDERER? A Lithuanian doctor, priest and a war refugee Alexander Ferdinand Bendoraitis (1919-1998) resettles to the Amazonian jungle in the 1960's and becomes a local hero: establishes a boat-clinic network, first jungle radio, starts the pacification of local indigenous tribes and builds the most modern hospital in the Amazonia. Yet, as he gets involved in a brutal crime, countless fake narratives that he had created around himself begin to resurface.

14) Long Live King David
Dir: Ido Zand & Yael Leibovitz; 59 min; Hebrew with Eng subtitles; Israel; 2019

Is the Biblical story about David's legendary Kingdom indeed true? The film takes us on a journey to find the answer and reveals unexpected findings – about the present.

15) Vovan
Dir: Alexandra Zaytseva; 12.42 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2019

Vladimir Kolokoltsev, a senior sergeant in Fire Department No. 42, risks his life every day to save people from the fire, despite his family's disapproval.

16) Edit as if I disappeared
Dir: Oksana Timchenko; 15.09 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2019

Young people get to know each other on a film course, make a documentary about suicide together in search of an answer to the question why life is worth living, and fall in love with each other. Six months later, the guy commits suicide, and the girl tries to make him the protagonist of the film, editing from the periphery of the footage: the moments and phrases captured by the camera - by accident or as a joke.

17) Last Kiss
Dir : Eradzh Nidoev; 4.29 min; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia, Tajikistan ; 2019

We often stop valuing what we have. The director had the idea of creating a social experiment among couples "with troubles", and so to see what would happen if they had to break up for real...

18) 1944. Crimea. Deportation
Dir: Fatima Osman, Yunus Pasha; 62 min; Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar with Eng subtitles; Ukraine; 2019

In 1944 Crimean Tatars has suffered a long road in exile. It was accompanied by famine, illness and loss. In the first years of exile, almost half of deported Crimean Tatars died. But those, who survived, dreamed of only one thing – to return to Crimea. The documentary 1944 tells about the tragedy of all Crimean Tatars through several separate life stories. They are cherished by each Crimean Tatar family and must be remembered by all generations to come.

19) Over the Barriers
Dir : Banu Ramazanova; 60 min; Russian, Kazakh with Eng subtitles; Kazakhstan; 2020 

Horses for us, Kazakhs, have always been symbols of drive and victory. The story of the Soviet conquest of Olympus began with the legendary Absent. And now there are people and horses in Kazakhstan who are ready to storm the Olympic heights.

20) North for Happiness
Dir: Alexander Porotov; 2.04.15 hours; Russian with Eng subtitles; Russia; 2020

 A group of friends goes on a journey from St. Petersburg to Yamal, the name of which translates from Nenets as "the edge of the earth." They are going to find out why the country producing oil, rising gasoline prices and will try to know whether people live happily in regions that produce oil and gas for the whole country, and on what their happiness depends. Spectacular stories about the life and natural riches of the Northern region, exclusive interviews with the direct miners of oil and gas resources, who in the cold in unbearably difficult conditions earn money for the whole country, while representatives of the idle "golden youth" live at the expense of other people's work and the achievements of previous generations. 

21) Quarantine
Dir : Alisher Zhadigerov; 30 min; Kazak with Eng subtitles; Kazakhstan; 2020

The only way to defeat the coronavirus is through quarantine! The main recommendation is to stay at home. But the little hedgehog did not comply with the quarantine regime and went for a walk.

22) Speleonaut / Under the Stone Sky
Dir: Sonja Đekić; 57 min; Serbian with Eng subtitles; Serbia; 2018

On the eve of Man's conquest of the Moon, in the summer of 1969, 34-year-old Milutin Veljković set off to spend the following 15 months in a two-kilometer long cave in the Southeast Serbia, in a company of a dozen of hens and ducks, and a puppy. Veljković wasn’t just interested in beating the record in cave dwelling - he aimed to penetrate into the universe of depth.

This extraordinary deed is first revealed outside - through a series of portraits of interesting characters, all connected to Veljković. Unexpectedly, we enter the underground world. The various narrated fragments from Veljković's detailed cave diary are brought to life: from his daily routines, such as making coffee and collecting insects - to the dramatic events of pulling out his own tooth, craving for a woman, fighting with the flood and hallucinations.

From connecting with primeval ancestors in a disintegrated time and space, all the way to the outer space exploration, Speleonaut is in quest of our purpose.

23) Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse
Dir: Iara Lee; 58.17 min; English / Ukrainian / Russian with Eng subtitles; Ukraine/Slovakia/USA/Bulgaria; 2020

Exploration After Apocalypse, a documentary from Cultures of Resistance Films, examines the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster, wildlife has returned in the absence of human settlements. Meanwhile, illegal hiking adventurers known as 'stalkers', extreme sports aficionados, artists, and tour companies have begun to explore anew the ghostly, post- apocalyptic landscape.

24) From Trash to Treasure: turning negatives into positives
Dir: Iara Lee; 20 min; English; USA/Lesotho/Bulgaria; 2020

In Lesotho—a highland country surrounded by South Africa—an artist named Nthabiseng TeReo Mohanela takes discarded materials and transforms them into unique clothing and accessories. Teaching young people the benefits of recycling and re-creation, she calls her project “From Trash to Treasure.”

25)Ivanova igra
Dir: Tomislav Zaja; 52 min; Croatian with Eng subtitles; Croatia; 2020

IVAN’S GAME is a biographical documentary which covers the life story of one of the greatest Croatian football players of all time: Ivan Gudelj. The film follows Ivan’s meteoric rise and the tragic end of his career at the height of his fame when he got ill from hepatitis B virus that nearly killed him. It is a story of an exceptional man who lost everything because of the  illness, but eventually won his life’s game.

Artists Cinema : Vipin Vijay

Vipin Vijay : On his work

VIDEO GAME 

1. What was the source of inspiration or creative trigger to make these films? Was it an idea, experience, image, incident or thought?

I need to rewind a bit. As a filmmaker, my earliest experience to align with like-minded friends started from my film school days. We were all very young. For my graduation film ‘The Egotic World’, I was working on the thematic probe of the epic text of Yoga Vasishta. To recollect now, I still remember the night we reached this place in an interior village in Bengal after a daylong location scouting. To our surprise the next morning we found that the place was scattered with thousand-year-old Jaina ruins and idols. The space was totally alienating to us. I just took the call and finally we decided to shoot the film there. Now as we started shooting, the process of filming became a bizarre encounter for all of us. People getting lost and going missing, camera breaking down, crazy accidents…The crew was slowly getting very numb. Slowly we realized that we were adopting spatial feelings with different time-based co-ordinates. This particular realization and the filming process in itself was a high. Now to look back, I would say a new process and an idea of what it means to ‘collaborate’ started originating from there. This idea of making encounters hard to make our positions strange to ourselves is something I gathered from this experience. This feeling of being pulled and pushed at the same time has been one of the pivotal areas of my filmmaking. This I feel was exchanged conceptually in the works that followed. The film school was indeed a window opening to the vast function of art amidst the contemporary confusion. Then I graduated and I came back to Kerala. I found the situations really confusing in terms of practicing cinema at that point of time in Kerala. I developed ideas but on the level of film practice, I was not finding money to work on 35mm. Digital Video revolution hadn’t fully arrived in the country. So the only possibility was to utilize low-end video. This is also a time when one read Fredrick Jameson, the Marxist political theorist, and his seminal essay where he talked about the phenomenology of memory in context of video. So there was a conscious attempt to look at the medium from those contexts. It was clear by then - a work in video is much separate from that of a work in film. But it is perhaps in “Video Game”, with my editor and collaborator Debkamal Ganguly that we have tried to engage ourselves to those discourses on video in a much more interesting way.

The inspiration for ‘Video Game’ was the unused 35mm black & white footages of my earlier mentioned diploma film ‘The Egotic World’, that I got to get hold of in one of my visits to the institute after I passed out. I had edited my diploma film on a steenbeck machine, so one had a to make a 35mm positive work print for editing the work. Usually the institute discarded the unused positive work print footages after the student graduates. They were sold as scrap and I was told in some cases the filmstrips were recycled and made into bangles. I somehow got access to those 35 mm work print positives before they were thrown off. Once I had access to this, we decided to take a trip revisiting to the earlier mentioned location where I had shot my diploma film this time carrying a video camera and on an old Mark II Ambassador car. I specifically wanted a black Ambassador car. No reasoning, I just chose this time. We searched and found out an old black ambassador car. We took off, did take a few detours, had few new encounters but when we finally reached the space where I had actually shot my diploma film, somehow the enigma for me on a personal level had vanished. I was also doing the camera work. I kept shooting whenever I felt like, but nothing much happened. There were three of us, my film school batch mates, who were also part of the earlier film shot in the same space. We stopped talking to each other. I gave up and came back. But surprisingly a whole new process evolved while editing this video. Just during the process of watching those 35mm footages, we observed that the dust particles on the old film footage worked in a totally new fashion. I had actually shot the unused 35 mm positive footages using a video camera. These ingredients on the 35 mm filmstrip again got unbalanced when those got recorded in the medium of video. It suddenly felt like a preserved substance that was held with memory. A new set of sensibilities started evolving. We decided not to just only look on the informational part of the images. This was a game we invented by pushing the images we shot to our intellect and reasoning. We were sucked into a new experiential self, and in the process fundamental concepts were discovered. Eventually this opened up uneven outline of feeling and perception. Nevertheless it was not a search of hidden truth in the images. Of course, these images carried unseen folds of the subjectivity. This subjectivity is not a distinct one and was also not easily decipherable. I think it was a combination of very many things. The idea of memory possibly came from a variety of sources. Human subjectivity and memory, subjectivity of the machine, post-human pragmatic thought, audio-tactile medium of video, the archeology of imagination, all started emanating from this process. This was a vital turning point. It was a like an unexpected wave which secretly gave you a reassurance. It was an assurance to move beyond the surface level information that one saw in the images. The process slowly picked up. And strangely a sense of confidence was building and we knew that the turf of the video was becoming extremely playful. In the next phase we conceptually assimilated it. We ended up treating those images as 'concept-image'. This process tends to continue till date.

I would say Chitrasutram / The Image threads; my fiction feature film that followed is in one sense an extension of this preoccupation. Lastly, I should specifically thank Mr. Rajiv Mehrotra and the team of PSBT who supported me in making this video.

SMALL –SCALE SOCIETIES

What was the source of inspiration or creative trigger to make these films? Was it an idea, experience, image, incident or thought?

It was around 2018, and I had almost given up making films. I embarked on a new phase, deciding to teach cinema at the film school. As part of the curriculum, I had invited Dr C S Venkiteswaran as an expert to evaluate the student projects. We were having lunch in the campus and I talked about this place called Jwalapuram, where I had shot a portion of my last feature film. Jwalapuram is an archaeological site, which shows and has traces of hominid habitation before and after the Toba event. The volcanic residue scattered around Jwalapuram is a living testimony to it. The earth’s largest known eruption, Toba super volcanic eruption had actually occurred around 75,000 years ago, at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. I also told Dr Venkiteswaran that evening while having a cup of coffee about the possible further exploration I might want to do if I get a chance. I don’t know why I said it. Dr C S Venkiteswaran was part of the curatorial team that was looking at projects from the sub continent for an arts festival. The project was spearheaded by artist and curator Riyas Komu, which was titled ‘ Young Sub Continent’, for the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa. Both of them traveling around the sub continent scouting projects and meeting artists. Dr Venkiteswaran called me after a week asking me to meet Riyas. I wrote a project brief and met Riyas in Kochi. We spent qualitative time discussing the possibility of a project. On a personal front, it was a meeting that as of today changed our destinies in very many ways. Riyas supported me with the project and I owe it to Riyas for taking me out of my hibernation. This video art project was one of the free wheeling exercises that I ever did. It was not envisaged as a film or a work for film festivals. There was neither hardly any script nor any destiny attached to it. I only knew that the finally the video would be looped inside a room within a colonial structure, the old management institute in Goa, provided by the Serendipity Arts Festival team. I have always had a keen interest in archeology since my film school days and most of my works have been situated in specific spaces dealing with archeological layering. I live with this feeling that the projected uncertainty of the past gets redefined within us continuously. So I made it a point to set an encounter every time I got to make a film or a video. Over a period of time I have also felt that cinematoprahic writing and archeology have some open-ended closeness to each other. Both in the form of a document and as an encounter. But when I finally decided to shoot the project, we invented a few queries within the framework of this project, which guided the process. These are queries for which probably I haven’t still found answers, which also means the project, could have further extension. 

These are the basic questions - 

1. Archeology is a discipline, which is at the boundary of both science and humanities. Is the present engagement of archeology is more tilted towards science, and if it is the case how the concern of humanities can be brought back to archeology?

2. By analyzing the prehistoric artifacts is it possible to understand the prehistoric mind? Is there a fundamental abyss between the prehistoric and contemporary human mind? Can that abyss be crossed?

3. Archeology always deals with past. But a time in future will come when present time, even the horizon of conceivable future will be a topic of remote past and hence explorable by archeology. What can be the imagination of that archeology of the future?

4. A significant enterprise of archeology is dating and hence quantification of past. How that quantification of time can be used to nurture the qualitative sense of past, a feeling of time?

Given these possibilities to explore, the video was finally finished and exhibited at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2018. 

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VIDEO GAME

SMALL SCALE SOCIETIES 

Artists Cinema : Riyas Komu

Riyas Komu - On his works

My Grave

This short film titled MY GRAVE was made by me in 2010 in collaboration with Nasiruddin Shah, which was part of an exhibition project to raise funds for Khushi Charitable trust that supports underprivileged children.

This film is purely an attempt to reflect on our time. This single-shot film that invites the viewer to contemplate upon the other in order to introspect upon oneself. When our gaze meets Naseeruddin Shah’s, it becomes an intense journey that gradually erases the boundaries between looking out and looking in. Together we begin to ponder upon the human condition, and to reflect upon the very foundations of our being, here and now.

This was conceived as produced as a visual archive of expressions of angst, anger, depressions and concerns.

Last Wall

This work is conceived as a documentary by profiling graffiti produced on street walls by a wandering mentally challenged individual in my locality near my studio. I observed him many years as he was present in my visual premise and his work started spreading in 2km square on all street walls, Pillars, Trees, shop counters. He grew into an enigma and my growing enchantment with the man and his scribbles prompted me to follow him more closely.. This film is also an outcome of my interest in the socially discarded..

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MY GRAVE

LAST WALL

Artist Cinema : Gigi Scaria

Gigi Scaria : On his works

No Parallels

Medium: Two channel video with sound
Duration: 6 minutes
Year: 2010

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‘No parallels’ is a video installation.

The installation has two projections running parallel to each other. The projection on the left side features archival images of Mahatma Gandhi which include images of his personal moments,him surrounded by people, leading political movements and also the lonely moments of meditation and silence. These images have been constructed as flip cards and appear one after the other. The final image that appears on the screen is a hundred rupee note with the image of Gandhi.

The projection on the right side has images of Mao Zedong. This too displays selected archival images of important moments in Mao’s life. There is an attempt to trace similar kind of images from the life of both leaders. For example, the long march of Mao is shown parallel to the salt march of Gandhi. The final image on the right side of the projection has a hundred Yuan Chinese currency with the image of Mao.

It is an attempt to understand the psyche of two nations through their historical narratives. These two personalities have contributed their best to create the modern India and modern China. In terms of historical time, personal values, political philosophy and the impact on the people of their country M.K. Gandhi and Mao Zedong stand in two different poles. These historical icons, when placed next to each other certainly create a serious discourse on the project of nation building and its impact on contemporary psyche.


Panic City

Medium: Single channel video with sound
Duration: 3 minutes
Year: 2007 

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The main themes in ‘Panic City’, addresses the construction fever, social hierarchies and the cleaning process the government was then involved in, due to the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Delhi. It is an animation constructed from photographic stills and the old Delhi shot from the minaret of Jama Masjid (one of the Asia's largest mosque built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan). The western classical music is used in the video in-order to show the role of a 'conductor'. The conductor takes the stand as an outsider and controls the event from a higher pedestal. In the same manner the forces of globalization conduct the waves of change into the urban arenas of India, which churns the existing local system into jeopardy. Most of the area you see in the video was once part of the target for the cleaning drive.


Let it be…

Medium: Single channel video with sound
Duration: 3 minutes
Year: 2012 

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In this video work, Let it be…, a constant resistance is being sabotaged by a persistent intention. Floating position of finding numerous territories as opposed to a solid ground, on which the resistance takes place, is the mood of the time in which we live.


Disclaimer

Video duration: 9 min 30 sec.
Single channel with sound
Year: 2018

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The video work titled Disclaimer continues Scaria’s critique of capitalism and its enchanting narrative of development. We see the hands of magician moving the bowls, not swiftly but very slowly, unravelling a series of objects and finally revealing images of dead bodies of citizens murdered in the recent past. This video acts as a strong commentary on the nexus of capitalism and communalism which draws its inspiration from an imagined past and sells the dream of a better future. In the contemporary Global and Indian context, one cannot ignore the rise of right-wing populist regimes, religious fundamentalism and its close ties with capitalism. The right is not only destroying the idea of a welfare state and the various democratic institutions but it is also destroying every space of emancipation. On the one hand the problems of inequality and exclusion continue to thrive while they polarise the society using a conservative nationalist language of sovereignty, security, and purity. This ideology also seeks its legitimacy by presenting the narrative of development or progress in a distant future. This model of economic development deeply embedded in the political mythology of the right has no space for the marginalised. According to the right they are the “parasites” which need to be cleansed for the betterment of the collective future. Therefore, dreaming collective’s desires can only be fulfilled through encounter killings, displacements, genocides and other such violations of rights.

Extract from the essay Man in the End Times written by Premjish Aachari

Artists Cinema : Ranjini Krishnan

Ranjini Krishnan : On her film

What was the source of inspiration or creative trigger to make this film? Was it an idea, experience, image, incident or thought?

This film has a tenuous relationship with the process of researching and writing. I have conducted unstructured in-depth interviews that used the psychoanalytic method of Free Associationto generate accounts of the lived experience of the wedding night in Kerala. Free Association as a clinical method and as a research method foreclosed questions. I was just recording what the interviewees felt important in my research around wedding night. Sometimes they narrated their wedding night experience. Most often they forgot their experience, but came up with very vivid stories on other people’s wedding night. The process of narrative generation itself was an overwhelming experience for me. I remember myself sitting alone a in a room in 2015 and listening to these interviews again and again and trying to transcribe and understand the ‘polyphonic timbre’ of the voices. I have encountered voices imprinted with trauma. I have witnessed loss and recovery of voice in the re-telling of this experience. I had moments of melt down. The narrative gravity of each one of them were inviting an analysis. But I had no idea how to make sense of these narratives together. And as a research project I couldn’t escape from that injunction to make sense of it. While listening to these interviews I observed that in almost all of them there is at least a passing reference to a failed attempt at ‘escape’ from the nuptial chamber. That was the only point common to these interviews. That was enough I think for Scheherazade to come into this project. She comes to my research as the only bride who managed an escape act from the nuptial chamber. It was so comforting to have a sister like her while navigating through these affect laden stories. The bride who tells stories in the fear of beheading in ‘ One Thousand and One Nights’ becomes a culturally distilled metaphor for a site of erotic danger in the thesis lending meaning to various voices drifting away in different directions.

And Scheherazade did not leave me even after me finishing my doctoral project. I was tired writing “ I propose, I argue, I draw and I depart’ in the thesis. So I asked her what do you want from me as a soul sister. She wanted me to free her from the familiar quarters regimented research. And this film for me is an attempt to do so. She has agreed to help me understand theliminality of wedding night and listen to the uncanny in a better way in return. I am not sure whether the deal between us can be felt in the film. But this was the deal.



How did you arrive at this form?

The braided hair was the image that came to me first when I thought of the film and rest of the images followed. I have always found this plaited hair piece a bit uncanny. I have seen them in bridal make up rooms and make up rooms of school arts festivals and temple festivals . I have always played with them with a secret pleasure of holding something I am not supposed to hold. And perhaps there is no such object than this that could invoke a culturally sanctioned practice that could sever the bodily integrity of a woman.Putting it in a post-lit white cube was a conscious choice. I wanted to capture the stillness of the moment and the making of a claustrophobic space and frozen subjectsall at once. And the nail, as the Kerala folklore suggests becomes the phallic resolution of the feminine excess in the event. I also wanted to foreground the conflict in two perceptual economies present in the moment of wedding night, the visual and the aural. The impulse to see and to listen to. The ‘soft porn’ frame of storytelling and the CG Spider in a way tries to address this conflict. The I-poem was a direct transplant from the thesis and the text animation gave it further momentum than static letters I felt.

The film also can be seen as an essay in seven chapters. That was not a conscious choice. Perhaps I am never a film maker.

I propose .

I argue .

I draw.

I depart.

This could be my I-poem.

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Password : ac2020

Parvathi Nayar - on her work

Parvathi Nayar 

Film : A River

“A River” is a performative reanactment of the seminal poem A River by AK Ramanujan. Water has been a thread that runs through so much of my work, and a subject that I return to over and again.

I wanted to talk about how water leaves its mark in the city – ironically both as flood and drought, as mentioned in the poem by Ramanujan. I therefore walked around the city with camera in hand (and with another friend and her camera ) to find every word of the poem in the streets and shops and residences of Chennai. I performed the poem on foot in Chennai, so to say, embedding Ramanujan’s poem in this city.

The poem, recreated word by word, loses none of its urgency in this retelling.

Film : Tamarind Trails: The Tree that Went on a Walk

“The Tree that went on a Walk” is part of a four-video installation I created for Girish Shahane’s show on botanicals, Anthesis

The roots of it are autobiographical – ie, a large tamarind tree was a beautiful part of my childhood in Chennai. When I returned to Chennai after many years abroad, and came back to live oddly enough in the same building in which I had grown up, I would see this lovely tamarind tree outside my window. It was heartbreaking when the tree was uprooted in Cyclone Varda, and crashed to the ground. Then, to dispose of it, we had to pay workmen to come and chop up the mammoth tree into little bits and take it away.

I filmed the chopping up of this tree.

Years later I decided to develop these sequences into a film – to move out from this intensely emotional moment of my journey, and think about the “journey” of the tamarind tree. I discovered the tamarind is not actually native to India but was brought by traders from Africa. This seemed such a powerful idea in these times when immigration and immigrant issues put the spotlight on the “other”.

As botanist Dr Narasimhan told me – “I don't like to think of the tamarind tree as alien - What is alien, what is the other? When something has taken root in our soil for so long, I like to think of it as one of us.”

The truth of his saying is exemplified in the journey I took to the Dindigul area of Tamil Nadu to see how the tamarind is cultivated and harvested and is part of the life and livelihood of so many people. I was especially lucky to meet Mahalakshmi and her extended family/community of women whose lives revolve around tamarind cultivation and processing.

Vedanth’s music – old poetry about the tamarind in Tamil and Hindi that we handpicked are a wonderful counterpoint to the film.

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Tamarind Trails : The Tree that Went for a Walk 

The River