The Stories We Follow: On LAB Collective’s Multimedia Film Dante Katha

In the opening scenes of the short film Dante Katha, we follow a young girl in pigtails tied with red ribbons, carrying a packed school bag through the sloping streets and markets of Darjeeling. The cautionary voices of adults haunt her, instructing her, “Do not go to those shops.” Precisely after, we see her decisively—and defiantly—entering one such shop and ordering momos. Just as she begins to take a bite, the documentary-like shot shifts into vivid animation where her inner organs are infused with the supposed poisoned roots in the food, and her lungs are overcome with infection. Textile is used to image her body—wool and thick cotton are enlivened through the moving picture, and we witness dark tendrils vanquish her digestive system. She puts the momo down and runs out. The warnings she hears spring from a mistrust of Tibetans by the Nepali-speaking communities in Darjeeling, as well as their business in the region. The conflict then finds its way into everyday stories, particularly those around food. This incident is the beginning of the protagonist’s testing of boundaries between what she is told and how she experiences it, the point where she navigates fear, wonder and hope.

Dante Katha (translating into “oral stories” in Nepali) is the story of a girl searching for her missing brother, set against the larger backdrop of how folk stories and myth-making mediate her pursuit. This interactive multimedia film by LAB Collective was exhibited at the Kathmandu Triennale 2077, held from 1-31 March 2022. The collective is composed of five members: Dishant Pradhan (filmmaker), Prakruthi Rao (textile designer), Arunatpal Chanda (graphic designer/illustrator), Akshara Mehta (textile designer) and Sarah Naqvi (artist). All graduates from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, they work across the disciplines of visual art, cinema, textile design and performance. They continue to stay engaged despite living and practising in varied geographies. Two members of the collective are primarily located in Darjeeling, where they gather intermittently. Since 2019, they have been interested in oral and folk histories (predominantly from the eastern Himalayas), and how multimedia can visualise, trace, hold and share them. They are keen to explore how stories are told, how they move people, and the kinds of figures they conjure that are between the human and non-human, inhabiting both earthly and supernatural realms.

The film is attuned to the city of Darjeeling and its terrain. It draws on its atmosphere as the lead character moves through mountains dense with mist, or winding moss-laden paths lit only by her candle. These are the sites for multiple (and sometimes divergent) stories that the young girl hears from different adults. Some of these stories include yeti-like characters or banjhakri shamans that are known to kidnap human children as apprentices to teach them magic, or long-haired lemlemey with backward-pointing feet and swelling nostrils that devour children. Illustrated through decadent costumes and eerie rhythms, the filmmakers infuse a dream-like quality to the girl’s “reality” and earnest quest. The stories she has heard and internalised shape her shifting environment, leading her to encounter mysterious beings that share the landscape with her.

Dante Katha, in an essential way, is about childhood as a time of questioning, of following stories and claiming them as your own. It is the curiosity of childhood that makes space for all kinds of creatures and beings and enables the crossing of boundaries of the logic of an adult world. Shot entirely from the perspective of the young protagonist, the film focuses on how myths help us process pain. It is also about the twilight zone of imaginary games, where the world is constructed based on what we hear and what we learn as we experiment in, and with, our environment through our own experiences. The special cinematic and multimedia effects used to interpret the folk stories are a proposition by the artists showing how the digital can render—and even embody—the shifting nature of oral narratives. It also conveys that perhaps we need not always turn to more conventional methods of recording and documentation to listen deeply.

All images courtesy of LAB Collective and Kathmandu Triennale 2077.

To read more about the work of artists that documents Darjeeling, please click here.