adivasi-resistance

Adivasi Resistance: Documenting Protest in Bastar

Nikita Jain May 20, 2025

Bastar is considered to be one of the most militarised zones in the world. For decades, the region has witnessed conflict due to the constant clashes between the national security forces and Maoist groups. However, with the coming of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in the state’s by-elections in November 2024, the situation intensified following Indian Home Minister Amit Shah’s announcement of the start of ‘Operation Kagar’.

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asian-voyages
events

Asian Voyages: The Films of Deben Bhattacharya

Arindam Sen May 16, 2025

In January 2025 at Sinema Transtopia in Berlin, Arindam Sen curated two film programmes and a listening session of ethnomusicologist, archivist, field recordist, photographer, documentary filmmaker and writer Deben Bhattacharya’s films and musical recordings. This essay is an edited version of his introductions to the sessions.
afterlives-of-lekra
events

Afterlives of Lekra: Authoritarian Regimes and the Erasure of Bandung’s Spirit

Fathimah Fildzah Izzati May 15, 2025

Turang (Comrade, 1957), was banned and its creator exiled and imprisoned under Soeharto’s authoritarian regime. The film portrays the anti-colonial struggle in Indonesia, and emphasises collective care as essential to sustaining resistance, in alignment with the spirit of Bandung.
turang
events

Turang: On Cultural Revolution and People’s Liberation Struggle in Indonesia

Fathimah Fildzah Izzati May 13, 2025

Turang (Comrade, 1957) is a long-lost Indonesian film by leftist director Bachtiar Siagian, whose work and life were violently disrupted by Soeharto’s New Order regime. This film was created just two years after the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference (AAC) in Bandung. Appropriately, it was screened on 24 April 2025, at the Barbican Cinema in London, exactly seventy years after the Bandung Conference.
acts-of-curation
events

Acts of Curation: On Artists for Artists

Upasana Das May 10, 2025

Experimenter’s 16th anniversary show Artists for Artists was curated by three of the gallery’s represented artists, namely Sohrab Hura, Rathin Barman and Bhasha Chakrabarti. Together, they brought in four other artists—Rai, Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Sathish Kumar and Rupali Patil, none of whom had previously exhibited at the gallery. This practice is a highlighting of artists as friends, coworkers and mentors, and what that does to each other’s practice.
flickering-lights
events

Flickering Lights: On Hope and Resilience in Tora

Sudha Padmaja Francis May 09, 2025

Screened at the 2025 Kolkata People’s Film Festival, Flickering Lights (2023), a feature-length documentary film made by Anupama Srinivasan and Anirban Dutta over the course of seven years, begins with illustrations of a house made of white lines drawn on a live-image of a textured old wall, which give us the context of the film.
subdued-song-of-chaa
stories

Subdued Song of Chaā: On Nistha Thapa Shrestha’s Practice

Alfa M. Shakya May 07, 2025

Nistha Thapa Shrestha's photo series Subdued Song of Chaā (2024) pays homage to her hometown and brings to light an untold side of pottery making.
on-publishing-at-the-chennai-photo-biennale-2025
events

On Publishing at the Chennai Photo Biennale 2025

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews May 05, 2025

Amidst the framed photographs displayed at the fourth edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale were photobooks bringing together images that spoke of intimacy and sensoriality. What happens when a photograph is not framed and exhibited? What do we feel when we encounter it in the form of a book? Can how we see an image change the way we perceive it?
in-the-wake-of-remembering
events

In the Wake of Remembering: Memories of the 1992 Burnsall Strike

Kshiraja May 03, 2025

Screened at the 2025 Kolkata People’s Film Festival, Sara Saini’s In the Wake of Remembering (2024) reflects upon three women’s memories of the 1992 Burnsall strike as it pieces together the political, personal and domestic lives of South Asian women against the history of workers’ struggles in the UK. In this interview, Saini talks about the importance of the act of remembering the strike through her film.

polarised-hatred-politicised-bodies
events

Polarised Hatred, Politicised Bodies: On Nasir and Communal Violence

Sumaiya Mustafa May 01, 2025

Arun Karthick’s Nasir (2020) is set in a working-class neighbourhood in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu’s second largest city. Screened at the PK Rosy Festival as part of the Vaanam Art Festival in celebration of Dalit History Month, the film follows a casual working day of Nasir, the protagonist, and the web of sounds that follow him wherever he goes.

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the-aural-world-of-nasir
events

The Aural World of Nasir: Sound, Ritual and Identity

Sumaiya Mustafa Apr 29, 2025

Screened at the PK Rosy Film Festival 2025 as a part of the Vaanam Art Festival, Arun Karthick’s Nasir (2020), an adaptation of Dilip Kumar’s “A Clerk’s Story,” opens with the first ray of light waiting behind the sound of pre-dawn Azaan—the call for prayer that emerges loudly from the Masjid and permeates the still neighbourhood.
between-valour-and-prejudice
stories

Between Valour and Prejudice: Chhaava, Maratha History and Marathi Cinema

Prabodhan Pol Apr 27, 2025

Technically refined and stylistically innovative, Chhaava (2025) directed by Laxman Utekar, is deeply influenced by the aesthetic and ideological framework of Marathi historical cinema, particularly its portrayal of Maratha valour, regional pride, and Mughal antagonism.
marathi-cinema
stories

Marathi Cinema: Cultural Memory and Hegemonic Nationalism

Prabodhan Pol Apr 25, 2025

From the 1940s onwards, the rise of Marathi cinema played a pivotal role in popularising both the Kshatriya-Maratha narrative and a broader Marathi linguistic identity, using vivid visuals to narrate tales of regional pride, valour and historical continuity centred on the Maratha Empire and its prominent figures.
rhythms-of-revolution
events

Rhythms of Revolution: Ritwik Ghatak’s Amar Lenin

Koyna Tomar Apr 23, 2025

Ritwik Ghatak’s Amar Lenin (1970) follows a young, unnamed protagonist’s encounters with the revolutionary ideas of Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Lenin, as the former embarks on a coming-into-consciousness journey through 1960s Bengal. The documentary was thus a fitting choice to mark Red Books Day at May Day Bookstore in Delhi. Organised in collaboration with Camera Commune, the screening on 21 February 2025 opened an evening of programming to celebrate leftist books, art and people’s movements.
on-theatre-and-architecture
events

On Theatre and Architecture: Re: Staging 1990s (Delhi)

Akanksha Maglani Apr 21, 2025

On view from 1–10 February 2025 at the Triveni Amphitheatre, Triveni Kala Sangam, in conjunction with the India Art Fair, the exhibition Re: Staging the 1990s (Delhi), presented by the Alkazi Theatre Archives and the Alkazi Collection of Photography, foregrounded the use of the architectural/theatrical model as an investigative tool.
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