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The Disowned and the Denied: Saiful Huq Omi’s Documentation of the Exiled Community

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 08, 2021

Saiful Huq Omi has documented the Rohingyas in exile around the world—in the camps of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the cramped underground spaces of Malaysia and the hopeful streets of England.

A Transnational Revolutionary: Dr Savitri Sawhney on her father Pandurang Khankhoje

Anisha Baid Jan 19, 2021

Pandurang Khankhoje’s work at the agricultural school in Mexico is survived by many photographs taken by the celebrated photographer Tina Modotti.

The Agrarian Revolution and Tina Modotti: In Conversation with Dr Savitri Sawhney

Anisha Baid Feb 09, 2021

In this continuing conversation with Savitri Sawhney, we dwell on Pandurang Khankhoje’s work as an agrarian–responsible for the establishment of more than thirty free agricultural schools in Mexico.

Finding Archives Where There Are None: Documenting a Displaced Existence in the Forests of Chitwan

Anisha Baid Feb 10, 2021

As an online presentation of sustained anthropological and photographic research, the website provokes the documentary modality, weaving together the various social realities of a wounded landscape.

Indigenous Pasts, Sustainable Futures: Images from The Skin of Chitwan

Anisha Baid Feb 10, 2021

The Skin of Chitwan, an online exhibition by the Nepal Picture Library is a manifestation of the ongoing research project Indigenous Pasts, Sustainable Futures that attempts to document, archive and share Nepal’s marginalised histories.

Koodankulam: Amirtharaj Stephen’s Documentation of the Protests

Gulmehar Dhillon Feb 15, 2021

Amirtharaj Stephen’s set of photographs titled Koodankulam: In My Backyard documents the protests by the local community against the Indian and Russian Governments' commissioning of the Koodankulam power plant.

Gulf ⇄ South Asia: Unveiling Stories of Migration

Jennifer Chowdhry Biswas Feb 19, 2021

A colour photograph of a tailor from Gujarat working in Dubai, featured on the Instagram handle of Gulf ⇄ South Asia, is accompanied by an excerpt from an interview.

The Ecology of Cinema: Debashree Mukherjee on Bombay Hustle

Ketaki Varma Mar 01, 2021

Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle reveals itself as an ambitious history of these networks in Indian cinema. It offers a distinct portrait of the Bombay film industry during the silent to talkie transition of the 1920s–40s.

Film as Social History: Debashree Mukherjee on Bombay Hustle

Ketaki Varma Mar 02, 2021

In the second session of this two-part conversation about Bombay Hustle, Mukherjee discusses the role of women during the transition to the talkie, the novel ways in which she researched the book, and why she thinks fans are an essential part of the cine-ecology.

The Worker and the Machine: Decline of Ahmedabad’s Mill Industry in Working in the Mill No More

Arushi Vats Mar 05, 2021

In 1861, the city of Ahmedabad saw its first steam-driven cotton mill. Over the next six years, the Ahmedabad Spinning and Weaving Company grew from employing 63 workers to 500.

The Withering Public: Lives of Mill Workers in Working in the Mill No More

Arushi Vats Mar 05, 2021

Visions of abandonment and dereliction capture what follows the closure of the Ahmedabad mills.

Kheti Badi: Chinar Shah’s Photographs of her Digital Farm

Anisha Baid Mar 09, 2021

Kheti Badi is a series of photographs by Chinar Shah, made as screenshots on the (once) popular Facebook game FarmVille.

What is a Cine-Ecology? Scenes from Debashree Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City

Ketaki Varma Mar 12, 2021

“Filmmaking depends on a dense network of human and nonhuman energies,” writes Debashree Mukherjee as she explains the photographs in her recent book Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City.

Who is a Cine-Worker? Scenes from Debashree Mukherjee’s Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City

Ketaki Varma Mar 13, 2021

Debashree Mukherjee’s book Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City excavates the histories of people and places that make up the cine-ecology of erstwhile colonial Bombay, particularly between the late 1920s and the early 1940s—a period characterised by the shift from silent to talkie films.

Fabricating the Documentary Image: Shubham Kumar’s Negotiations with Violence and Representation

Anisha Baid Apr 05, 2021

Shubham Kumar is an artist from Gaya, Bihar. His practice explores the dialogue between image making and histories of violence through material engagements with painting and photography.

One, Many, And Those Lost In Between: The Photographic Works of Basir Mahmood

Anisha Baid Apr 13, 2021

Basir Mahmood is an artist and filmmaker based in Lahore and Amsterdam. His photographic work includes poetically constructed images that reflect upon social and historical realities embedded within the terrain of the mundane.

From Landmass to Ocean: Conversations with Sinthujan Varatharajah

Ankan Kazi Apr 20, 2021

Traumatic histories of violently dislocated communities produce fault lines that get enjoined to the public memories of host countries—much as the diverse refugee populations would have confronted the momentous upheavals of Germany on the verge of the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

People of Sri Lanka: Lionel Wendt's Portraits

Anisha Baid May 19, 2021

Lionel Wendt was an important figure in the development of modern and contemporary art in Sri Lanka (erstwhile Ceylon) who carved an influential legacy as a photographer, concert pianist and critic in the early and mid-twentieth-century.

Harvesting Images: Field Notes with Dharmendra Prasad

Annalisa Mansukhani May 26, 2021

Based in Guwahati, Assam, Dharmendra Prasad is an artist with a practice that spans the mediums of installation, video, painting, photography and performance.

Building Modern India: Jeet Malhotra’s Photographs

Sukanya Baskar May 27, 2021

Tasked with documenting the ambitious Chandigarh project, a large number of Jeet Malhotra’s photographs from that period are now archived as a part of the Pierre Jeanneret fonds—a digitally accessible collection of the personal activities and professional practice of the architect.

Capturing Line and Plane: Modernism in Architecture and Photography

Sukanya Baskar May 28, 2021

The modernist aesthetic within photography had existed for a while prior to the 1940s—in the clean lines and the highlighting of form through the stark play of light and shadow.

Visible Work and Invisible Bodies: P. Sainath and the People’s Archive of Rural India

Ankan Kazi Jun 07, 2021

Palagummi Sainath’s continuing engagement with a specialised language of photographic practice—where the artist effaces himself by submitting to the expression of an eloquent but invisible world of work—drives the project of People’s Archive of Rural India.

Imaging the Black Box: Tara Kelton’s Portraits of Uber as Imagined by Its Drivers

Anisha Baid Jun 18, 2021

Tara Kelton is an Indian-American artist whose work probes the traditional figure of the artist (and craftsperson) in relation to the digital.

Documenting Folk Performances: Prantik Basu’s Bela

Ankan Kazi Sep 10, 2021

Prantik Basu’s documentary Bela focuses on the performances of a troupe of Chhau dancers, called the Manbhum Sramjibi Chhau Nritya Dal.

Facing the Earth: On Tareque Masud’s Adam Surat

Ankan Kazi Sep 16, 2021

Tareque Masud’s first film was a documentary that he shot over seven years in the environs of the decolonial painter Sheikh Mohammed Sultan’s home in Narail, in the Jessore district of Bangladesh.

Women of the Sea: Palani Kumar Documents the Seaweed Farmers of Tamil Nadu

Gulmehar Dhillon Oct 20, 2021

In 2019, during a fellowship with the PARI, M. Palani Kumar, a photographer from Madurai, headed to the sea with seaweed harvesters from Bharathinagar, near Mayakulam village of Thiruppullani block.

Manual Scavenging in Tamil Nadu: Palani Kumar’s Documentation of the Practice

Gulmehar Dhillon Oct 21, 2021

Chennai-based photographer M. Palani Kumar’s work with manual scavengers began when he was the cinematographer (2015–17) for Kakkoos, a documentary film by the activist and filmmaker Divya Bharathi.

On Acts of Devouring: Days of Cannibalism

Najrin Islam Nov 13, 2021

Days of Cannibalism by Teboho Edkins is situated at the intersection of the Western and the documentary―a hybrid of genres that combines the aesthetic of observational vérité with a meta-commentary on power.

Of Life and Labour: Sohrab Hura's Pati

Gulmehar Dhillon Nov 30, 2021

Sohrab Hura’s eleven-minute-long black-and-white documentary film depicts the realities of a small village in the Central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Smoke and Fire in Nocturne: Ahmed Rasel’s Investigation of Bangladesh’s Brickfields

Ankan Kazi Jan 31, 2022

Ahmed Rasel’s project Nocturne presents a set of evolving perspectives on the complex, messy history of brick kilns in Bangladesh.

As Light as a Husk: Pallavi Paul’s Walking as Alibi: The Dreams of Cynthia

Arushi Vats Feb 17, 2022

About ten minutes into Pallavi Paul’s online performance Walking as Alibi, a string of voices begin humming haunting tunes as the screen flashes a dictum repeatedly: “Think of a lullaby, Now hum it to yourself.”

Fishing for Utopia: Dharmasena Pathiraja’s The Wasps are Here

Ankan Kazi Feb 28, 2022

Bambaru Avith looks at the impact of westernised, urban modernities as they encroach upon the lives of rural, isolated communities like the one shown in Kalpitiya, a small fishing village in north-western Sri Lanka.

Documenting Dalit Resistance: The Trajectory of Dalit Camera

Ankan Kazi Mar 09, 2022

Over the last decade, Dalit Camera has become a video-making institution and community media practice that foregrounds the problem of caste as it intersects with various other social barriers in India.

Quarter Number 4/11: Looking Back Ten Years On

Sujaan Mukherjee Mar 11, 2022

Filmmaker and activist Ranu Ghosh had met Singh quite by chance two years prior to the demolition of quarter 4/11.

The Labour of Politics: Filming the Aftermath of a Political Victory in Kush Badhwar’s Work Starts Now

Ankan Kazi Mar 12, 2022

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi was founded by K. Chandrashekar Rao in 2001. He intended for it to be a political platform that could deliver the promise of a separate Telangana state.

Making New Images: On the Exhibition Making a Photograph by Sunil Janah

Ankan Kazi May 05, 2022

Experimenter Gallery’s solo exhibition Making a Photograph featuring Sunil Janah’s post-independent industrial photographs carries forward the appropriation of Janah’s diverse contexts of photographic practice into the contemporary frameworks of art objectification in India.

Erasures in Saffron: On Ritesh Sharma’s Jhini Bini Chadariya

Najrin Islam Jun 13, 2022

The film Jhini Bini Chadariya (2021)—or The Brittle Thread—is built on a delicate scaffolding of human stories shaped by socio-political forces that are, in turn, determined by agents of institutional power.

Fear of the Fragment: On Vipin Vijay’s small-scale societies

Ankan Kazi Sep 12, 2022

Vipin Vijay's video work small-scale societies confronts the scale of civilizational narratives through the defiant partiality of fragments.

Documenting Theatre: Sridhar Balasubramaniyam’s Chameleon Land

Prabhakar Duwarah Dec 21, 2022

Chameleon Land is a photo project by Sridhar Balasubramaniyam that documents Manalmagudi Theatre Land’s entire process as they prepare for and stage the production of Puzhuthimarap Paravaigal.

Ways Out of Auteurism: The Fate of Filmmaking Collectives

Ankan Kazi Apr 07, 2023

In the popular consciousness of film audiences, the regime of studio-era productions—where the authorship of decision-making was controlled by producers and directors—was followed by the era of auteurism.

On Collective Documentary Practices: Ektara Collective’s Ek Jagah Apni

Ankan Kazi Apr 08, 2023

The film resurrects debates around filmmaking collectives at the level of decentralised production and at an allegorical level, where the collectivist spirit leaves a mark on the narrative of the film.

At Home in the World: The Archive of Navina Sundaram

Shivani Kasumra Apr 10, 2023

The Fifth Wall archive was launched amidst spirited discussions around decolonisation, public access and archival imaginaries.

A Living Archive: The Fifth Wall and Feminist Archiving Practices

Madhubanti De Apr 12, 2023

Conceptualised by Merle Kröger and Mareike Bernien, along with Navina Sundaram, within the framework of Archive außer sich (Archives Beside Themselves), The Fifth Wall proposes itself as a model for future archival practice.

An Event and Its Recalls: Evocations by The Fifth Wall

Stuti Bhavsar Apr 14, 2023

In a screening of The Fifth Wall held at the Goethe-Institut, Bangalore, Merle Kröger introduced the collection using the axis of media ethics and political potentials by presenting excerpts of films, letters, texts and commentaries.

Testimony in the Pandemic: A Lecture by Anuja Ghosalkar and Kai Tuchmann

Prabhjot Kaur May 26, 2023

Both Ghosalkar and Tuchmann’s work focuses heavily on the documentary and people’s histories, contrasting them with the increasing advent of digital mediums.

Uneventful Austerity: Babu Eshwar Prasad’s Hariva Nadige Maiyella Kaalu

Santasil Mallik Jun 07, 2023

Babu Eshwar Prasad’s practice of painting surreal landscapes, often moulded by dreams and psychic realities, finds its way into the film. He refashions landscapes and surrounding spaces in ways that ideate the characters’ inexplicable subjective designs.

Furtive Naivete: Seeing Udupi Hotels Like Stig Toft Madsen

Satyavrat KK Jun 09, 2023

In 1991, the year India declared its unambiguous participation in the neoliberal global market economy, Madsen had descended to South India to research Udupi hotels.

The Exemplary Intellectual: On Akshay Indikar’s Udaharanarth Nemade

Ankan Kazi Jun 19, 2023

Akshay Indikar’s documentary Udaharanarth Nemade (For Example, Nemade, 2016) mixes fiction, reportage and interviews to present a largely adulatory portrait of the Jnanpith Award-winning Marathi writer and critic, Bhalchandra Nemade.

Close to Home: On Riti Sengupta’s Things I can’t say out loud

Sukanya Baskar Jul 10, 2023

The series expresses the artist’s conflicting emotions upon returning to her childhood home after a period of eight years. Her unease emerged primarily from the disparity between the roles assigned to men and women within the household.

Curating the Contemporary Photograph: Tanvi Mishra on Moving Definitions | An Invitation To Re-View

Sukanya Baskar Jul 13, 2023

The exhibition collectively presents a series of strategies that challenge and complicate a monolithic interpretation, highlighting the significant role of personal memory and contextual interpretation as essential lenses for engaging with them.

A Very Old Machine: On Jahnavi Phalkey’s Cyclotron

Ankan Kazi Jul 24, 2023

The arrival of a pre-used cyclotron in a “regional”, North Indian university is critically framed by Phalkey in her film Cyclotron (2020) as the conduit for various interwoven narratives of political and social transformations

Postcolonial Histories of Science: On The Gold of a Yellow Plant

Ankan Kazi Jul 26, 2023

The film uses archival photographs, animation and a haunting soundtrack to present the revolutionary careers of three agronomist-activists—Nikolai Vavilov, Amílcar Cabral and Pandurang Khankhoje—whose work effortlessly upended the political norms of their time.

Running Away and Hiding: B.V. Karanth at the Movies

Satyavrat KK Jul 28, 2023

B.V Karanth’s expertise lay in Hindi and the various languages of the Dakshina Kannada region, be it Tulu, Konkani, or Kannada. He later became the director of his alma mater, the National School of Drama, taking students to the countryside to acquire various folk traditions by osmosis.

All the World’s a Stage: On The Chapal Bhaduri Story

Ankita Ghosh Aug 25, 2023

The Chapal Bhaduri Story, with a run time of 44 minutes, shines a light not only on what it takes to physically transition into character each evening but also on the inherent performance of gender when it comes to theatre and, above all, life outside of conventional society.

Come Over for a Drink, Kanchhi: On Communal Histories of Alcohol

Shranup Tandukar Aug 28, 2023

The film presents a nuanced portrayal of economic, social, cultural and religious factors that contribute to alcohol dependence in Nepali communities, especially those living precariously on the razor’s edge of poverty.

Spectral Resurgence: Silent Cinema in Asif Kapadia and Akram Khan’s Creature

Sanjita Majumder Oct 03, 2023

Creature is a film devised under the impetus of “pure cinema”, which emphasises technical exploration in the creation of a narrative, without the aid of speech, language or dialogue.

Postcolonial Gestures: Cultural Transference in Creature

Sanjita Majumder Oct 04, 2023

Asif Kapadia’s cinematic capture of the gestures and choreographies of movements in Creature explores the terrain of fusing Indian classical forms with Western ballet.

Erasing the Past: Photography in the Archive and the Work of Imran Channa

Ankan Kazi Oct 17, 2023

Channa’s work interrogates the nature of photography and its claim as a medium, especially a transparent one, which can communicate perfect historical knowledge to the present.

In Person: The Golden Thread by Nishtha Jain

Arundhati Chauhan Nov 26, 2023

In this edited conversation, Jain elaborates on her process when filming the jute mills, the long history of the filming industry and worker-centric cinema and the continuous process of filming life and work for the documentary.

Flags of Our (Migrating) Fathers: Fields of Punjab, Aflutter

Shankar Tripathi Dec 12, 2023

Fields Aflutter (2021–present), Peshawaria’s documentary interrogation of Punjab’s agrarian landscape, makes one thing abundantly clear from the beginning: there is nobody present to greet us in these photographs, for all those who lived here have left.

Seed, Soil, Rising: Turning: On Field and Work with Vidya Shivadas

Annalisa Mansukhani Dec 15, 2023

Turning: On Field and Work is curated by Vidya Shivadas, a New Delhi-based curator and director of the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA), as part of the 8th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, which opened on 15 December 2023.

Partitioned Cinemas: Salma Siddique’s Evacuee Cinema

Ankan Kazi Jan 04, 2024

Evacuee Cinema: Bombay and Lahore in Partition Transit, 1940–1960 by Salma Siddique explores the creative energies, production and subsequent circulation of popular cinema to offer fresh insights into partition, especially as it affected a range of common film personnel in both of those cities.

Cycles of Labour: On Meelon Dur by Megha Acharya

Kamayani Sharma Jan 26, 2024

In Meelon Dur, we see workers partaking in pleasures such as buying anklets and flying kites. By chronicling this free time of brick workers, among the most exploited workers in India’s labour sector, the documentary offers a critique of the material regime circumscribing their lives.

Reading the Body: In Conversation with Sandeep TK

Mallika Visvanathan Feb 26, 2024

In this edited interview, artist Sandeep TK speaks about how he developed his practice, his approach to photoperformance, engaging with forms of representation and critically examining the world around him.

Platform Proficiency: Influencers to Aspiring Creators

Sagorika Singha Mar 05, 2024

Through his instructional videos, Dimpu Baruah shifts the experience of community empowerment in a neoliberal creator economy where garnering engagement online depends on one’s competence in using the platform.

Ecology, Crime and the State: The Sovereign Forest

Shranup Tandukar Mar 20, 2024

Encompassing documentary film and multimedia works, the exhibition chronicles the resistance movements of Odisha’s indigenous and local communities against government entities and corporations.

Daule Daule: Through the Tharu Lens

Alfa M. Shakya Apr 16, 2024

The Daule Daule exhibition gives the viewer a glimpse into the lives of the Tharu community of Nepal. It shows us moments from their everyday lives and also dives into their rich repository of indigenous knowledge.

The Doctor Will See You Now: Love and Grief in Komal Mistri’s Photographs

Shankar Tripathi May 04, 2024

Komal Mistri’s photographs—assemblages that memorialise the lives of her subjects through ephemeral objects—are ineffably haunting.

Discerning the Marginal: Trolley Times and Documenting Protest

Kamayani Sharma Jun 06, 2024

Trolley Times (2023) is less an archive or chronicle than a measure of a historic velocity, marked at different points by campsite longueurs and spirited agitation. Echoing its beginning, the film’s closing sequence foregrounds the parallels between agricultural and journalistic processes, and the harvest of grains and facts, gauging the times of the trolley.

While We Watched: “Godi Media” and Ravish Kumar’s Dissent

Radhika Saraf Jun 28, 2024

Recipient of the Peabody Award 2024, Vinay Shukla’s documentary film, While We Watched (2023), is a sensitive portrayal of former NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar, amidst the rise of what Kumar labels pejoratively as “Godi Media.”

Moonsongs for Earth: Musical Imaginaries of Revolution

Arundhati Chauhan Jul 20, 2024

Prasiit Sthapit’s ongoing documentary series Moonsongs for Earth (2022–) chronicles the histories and legacies of music in the midst of the ten-year-long war in Nepal between the erstwhile constitutional monarchic government and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

A Fragmented History: Contemporary Filmmaking in Assam

Sagorika Singha Aug 09, 2024

The last decade can be considered one of the most prolific periods in Assamese film production. Many of them are recognised and awarded for their excellence both nationally and internationally. One common factor in all of them has been their funding source, at least for their first venture. Filmmakers including Bhaskar Hazarika, Reema Borah, Kenny Basumatary and Rima Das, to name a few, all crowdfunded or self-funded their first films.

A Satire of Patriarchy: Examining Kathal - A Jackfruit Mystery

Akash Sarraf Aug 12, 2024

Kathal - A Jackfruit Mystery (2023), directed by Yashowardhan Mishra, stars Sanya Malhotra as inspector Mahima Basoor in the hinterland of the Bundelkhand region in north and central India. The film offers a satirical take on the nature of bureaucracy, politics and the police procedural through its insipid and dry humour.

Staging a Film: Stills from Tagore’s Natir Puja

Ankan Kazi Aug 16, 2024

In 1931, Rabindranath Tagore filmed a version of his stage drama Natir Puja (A Dancer’s Worship) for B.N. Sircar’s New Theatres studio in erstwhile Calcutta. It recounted the tale of a court dancer Sreemati, who sacrificed herself at the altar of Buddha after his religious philosophy was censured by King Ajatasatru.

The Nepali Art Scene: In Conversation with Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha

Alfa M. Shakya Sep 16, 2024

In this edited conversation with Alfa M. Shakya, Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha, the curator of the Nepal Art Council (NAC), discusses the recent Deities of Nepal II exhibition held during May–June 2024 and provides an overview of the Nepali art scene in the last decade.

Archives of Agrarian Unrest: The Sivalokathyagar Temple

Shibi Nandan Sep 14, 2024

Achalpuram stands out as a rare case in the history of Chola temple architecture where moments of resistance by tenant cultivators—who had little to no control over the Brahmin temples—have found a place on the temple walls.

Imagistic Traces from the Pandemic: still, life by Ishan Tankha

Santasil Mallik Sep 19, 2024

Ishan Tankha recently exhibited a triadic set of zines titled still, life at this year’s edition of Pulp Society’s Paper & Play. The zine collection follows an ambulatory trail, primarily across Delhi and its outskirts, taking the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as its focal point.

Cartographies of Control: Mapping Coastal Regulation Zones

Kavyasri Saravanan Sep 21, 2024

Historically, cartographic exercises have been used as potent instruments of state power, shaping territorial claims, resource allocation and social order as mechanisms of control. In India, an exemplary case is the delineation of Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ) based on ecological sensitivity and development potential.

Farming the Revolution: Documentary Filmmaking as an Organising Tool

Kshiraja Oct 01, 2024

Farming the Revolution is remarkable not only in the documentation of the farmers’ protests, but in the way it relates to the movement itself and the possibilities it holds in terms of creative strategies of building and mobilising solidarity.

Gaza Lives: Notes from Film Works for Palestine

Santasil Mallik Oct 21, 2024

On 5 September 2024, Film Works for Palestine opened with the fourth edition of the “Gaza Lives” event periodically presented by the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF), where a line-up of speakers and performers paid tribute to the art and artists of Gaza.

Film Works for Palestine: Solidarity Within and Beyond the Industry

Santasil Mallik Oct 30, 2024

Last month, Film Workers for Palestine (FWP), Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF), Palestine Film Institute (PFI) and Film Students 4 Palestine (FS4P) co-presented the three-day parallel programme Film Works for Palestine at the Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto.

Image as Theory: The Place of the Visual in Writing

Vishal George Nov 13, 2024

James Elkins’ Keynote Address framed the discourse at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of Arts and Aesthetics’ Visual Studies postgraduate conference What do Images Want? Art, Identity and Difference. A Professor at the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Elkins’ talk was titled “Relations between Texts and Images” as it foregrounded the dialectic between these two mediums within art writing.

Creating Community: In Conversation with Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 15, 2024

The Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), founded by filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in 2012, is one of India’s foremost independent film festivals. We spoke to the founders about why they started the festival, the importance of community, the infrastructural role festivals like this can play and the future of independent film festivals in the country.

In Person: Taak by Udit Khurana

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 18, 2024

In this episode of In Person, Udit Khurana speaks about his directorial vision for his film Taak (Tracker, 2024), the heightened reality that is engendered by the very presence of a camera, the effect on mental health due to the technologically determined nature of the gig economy, the invasiveness of society’s gaze upon women, the multiple cities that exist simultaneously in Delhi and the experience of screening his film at DIFF.

In Person: Cinema Pe Cinema by Vani Subramanian

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 25, 2024

Vani Subramanian’s Cinema Pe Cinema: The Theatre. The Movies. And Us (2024) seeks to create “a memoryscape” of the Indian film-watching public. In this conversation, Subramanian speaks to us about the notion of the cinematic archive as ever evolving, the need to move beyond nostalgia when thinking of filmic histories, the large infrastructure at work to make and distribute movies, some advice for young filmmakers and her experience of screening the film at DIFF.

On Marching in the Dark: In Conversation with Kinshuk Surjan

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 27, 2024

In this edited interview, director Kinshuk Surjan speaks to us about why he made his film Marching in the Dark (2024), some of the challenges he faced, taking an observational approach and the importance of community for the farmer widows.

A Tradition of Resilience: Aditi Maddali’s Songs of Our Soil

Vishal George Nov 29, 2024

Aditi Maddali’s Songs of Our Soil (Pani Paata Poratam, 2019), supported by a grant from IFA under the Arts Research Programme is a result of her extensive research on the women of Telangana and the agricultural tradition of Uyyala songs which express their resilience and resistance.

Community, Craft and Legacy: Casting Music and Last Shoemakers of the Doon Valley

Vishal George Nov 30, 2024

In Casting Music (2016), Ashok Maridas follows the members of the Savita Samaj in Karnataka who face caste discrimination despite musical contributions as nadaswaram players. Lokesh Ghai and Jaymin Modi’s The Last Shoemakers of the Doon Valley (2024) locates the community of forty craftspersons producing custom-made footwear within the past and present of the social milieu of Dehradun and Mussoorie.

Foregrounding the Background: Of Dancers, Princely States and Unwritten Histories

Anoushka Antonnette Mathews Dec 02, 2024

On 27 October 2024, Siddhi Goel and C. Yamini Krishna made presentations as part of the panel: “Forgotten Genres, Publics and Practices: The Understated Ecosystem of Indian Cinema” at IFA’s Past Forward: The Pleasure, Purpose and Practice of Arts Research. The presentation by Goel on the ecosystem of background Kathak dancers in the Bombay film industry and Krishna on the scant histories of films from the princely states illustrated cinema beyond the mainstream to uncover narratives and histories that have been relegated to the margins.

From the Rural Archive: Peasants, Caste and Communalism

Vishal Singh Deo Dec 06, 2024

The private papers of the peasant leader Charan Singh (1947–87) and the Muzaffarnagar Zamindar Association (1920–45) are used here to trace the strategies adopted by the landowning class that ranged from posing as peasants in late colonial and postcolonial India to adhering to far-right politics from the 1990s. The essay tries to argue that the period following the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 allowed proponents of peasant rights to reinvent themselves as gatekeepers of majoritarianism.

The Earth Walked with Them: Rebellion and Trauma in Amma Ariyan

Kshiraja Dec 14, 2024

The final work of John Abraham, Amma Ariyan accents a non-linear fictional narrative with cinéma-vérité reports of ongoing and historical workers’ struggles, traversing the political and geographical landscape of Kerala. Screened as part of Dr. Omar Ahmed’s insightfully curated Rewriting the Rules: Pioneering Indian Cinema after 1970 at the Barbican, Amma Ariyan is rooted in the Parallel Cinema movement of the 1970s–90s.

In Person: The Everlasting River by Dayananda Nagaraju and Niranjan NB

Radhika Saraf Dec 17, 2024

Dayananda Nagaraju and Niranjan NB’s project The Everlasting River (2024), presented as part of Food Matters at the 9th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival from 15-22 December 2024 in Goa, is an invitation to reflect upon the civilisational significance of the Kaveri River.

In Person: Carbon with Ravi Agarwal and David Verghese

Radhika Saraf Dec 18, 2024

Carbon, curated by the Science Gallery Bengaluru in collaboration with Ravi Agarwal, reflects upon carbon as “buried sunshine” as it explores the limits and conditions of possibility of carbon as both substance and phenomenon. The exhibition contemplates the dialectic inherent in the very nature of carbon.

In Person: I Am Lawrence Wilson by Varun Kodamana

Radhika Saraf Dec 20, 2024

Varun Kodamana’s documentary I Am Lawrence Wilson (2022) is a joyride into the magical world of analogue film through the life of its protagonist, the near-seventy-five-year-old cinephile and artist Lawrence Wilson. Programmed as part of Aldona Video Club’s public screenings at the 9th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival from 15-22 December 2024 in Goa, the film uncovers the many sides of Wilson.

On the Aldona Video Club: In Conversation with Kapil Das and Grant Davis

Radhika Saraf Dec 25, 2024

The Aldona Video Club (AVC) is an ongoing film project that began in 2018 as a camera test. Founded by Kapil Das and Grant Davis, AVC attempts to blend traditional narrative modes of filmmaking with their parallel interest in more subversive forms of cinema and moving images. In this edited conversation, Kapil Das and Grant Davis speak with us about their practice as filmmakers and curators, their response tothe topography of Goa and audience responses to their choice of space for film screenings.

The Measure of Value: Daughter of the Sea

Radhika Saraf Jan 02, 2025

Screened at the 9th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival held in Goa from 15-22 December 2024, Nicole Gormley and Nancy Kwon’s 18-minute documentary Daughter of the Sea: Sisterhood in the Sea is a deeply moving and intimate account of the alienation caused by capital’s imperative of competition.

Curatorial Practice at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Mallika Visvanathan Jan 04, 2025

The fourth edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) with the theme “Why Photograph?” recently launched the first of its three phases in December 2024, and will be on display till March 2025 in various locations across Chennai. Mallika Visvanathan spoke to the curators of the primary shows about their vision and the insights they have acquired in reflecting on the biennale’s provocation.

My Father: Chronicles of a Dalit Textile Mill Worker in Mumbai

Babasaheb Kambale Jan 13, 2025

Babasaheb Kamble writes the story of his father, whose life reflects a broader narrative of migration, labour and resilience among Dalit textile workers, highlighting their struggles against economic precarity and caste-based discrimination within industrial labour sectors.

Landscape and History at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Kshiraja Jan 15, 2025

The fourth edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) emphatically platforms artists who, through their practice, seek to challenge dominant narratives in visual representation. Kshiraja interviews three of the CPB's featured artists pursuing these lines of inquiry through their practices by establishing landscapes as a repository of personal and collective histories.

Of Breath and Death: Vigil by Pallavi Paul

Pramodha Weerasekera Jan 17, 2025

Pallavi Paul’s ongoing multidisciplinary series of artworks titled The Wind in Your Body Is Just Visiting, the Breath Will Soon Be Thunder (2023–ongoing) reflects on the power of the unseen—a recurring motif in her decade-long practice. Vigil (2023), a film of nine minutes and twenty-two seconds, starts this series, where a graveyard keeper at a private cemetery near the Maulana Azad Hospital in Delhi reminisces about his work and livelihood during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Land, Development and Change: Amit Machamasi’s Not The Same Anymore

Alfa M. Shakya Jan 23, 2025

Not The Same Anymore (2023) by Amit Machamasi documents the shape-shifting nature of the land around his home. The series explores the intertwining of human stories with the environment by featuring subjects who work in brick kilns, most of whom come from rural parts of Nepal and have moved into the Valley to find work and economic progress. Inanimate objects also find a special storytelling moment in Machamasi’s photographs.

Coastal Commons: Fisherwomen’s Struggle for Dignity

Nithya K Jan 28, 2025

Porambokku, or the commons, refers to land and water bodies controlled by local communities, serving as vital resources for sustenance. In plain sight, any common—be it agricultural or coastal—may appear to represent the community’s shared space. However, a closer look reveals the intricate influence of socio-cultural factors like caste, religion, class and gender in negotiating the power dynamics that determine who truly controls and benefits from these spaces and who is able to access these spaces and share its resources.

Community Building at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Upasana Das Feb 07, 2025

Photographers have often collectively worked with a creative community to develop their practice or worked with particular groups of people to facilitate their expression. This year, the Chennai Photo Biennale (CPB) highlights the works of photographers building a community and creating work from it.

On All We Imagine as Light: Caste Hindu Endogamy and the Possibilities of Love

Ria De and Koonal Duggal Feb 18, 2025

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (AWIAL) (2024) is about the lives of three migrant women nurses and the ways in which they form community and solidarity with each other in the backdrop of the city life of Mumbai. It engages the politics of love and caste endogamy and that of migrant labour, as well as who can be a state and city subject and who cannot.

On Humans in the Loop: In Conversation with Aranya Sahay

Koyna Tomar Feb 21, 2025

Humans in the Loop (2024) by Aranya Sahay tells the story of Nehma, an Oraon woman, who returns to her village in Jharkhand following the breakdown of her marriage with a non-Adivasi man, as she begins to make sense of her new life in a familiar place. To retain custody and raise her two children, Nehma takes an unusual job as a ‘data labeller’ at an Artificial Intelligence (AI) data centre.

Representations of Labour at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Vishal George Feb 25, 2025

What is the capacity of photography to capture labour? What stories can pictures tell us about labouring bodies? Wielding a camera helps understand relations of labour in our social milieu while also indicating one’s own labour. Four projects featured at the Chennai Photo Biennale reflect further upon the theme of labour present in their works.

At Harkat Studios: A Space for Imperfect Cinema

Avani Tandon Vieira Feb 27, 2025

Harkat Studios was born to create space for founder Karan Talwar and his colleagues’ own analogue film practice and, as an extension of this project, the 16mm Festival was imagined both as an opportunity for artists to screen their work and a year-end check-in for the studio.

The Road to Bolpur: Migration and Mourning in Arpan Mukherjee’s “Impermanence”

Radhika Saraf Mar 13, 2025

Arpan Mukherjee’s deep exploration of rural-urban migration from Adityapur to Bolpur through photographs, video installation and sound recordings in his ongoing exhibition "Impermanence" (2025), on view at Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai from 14 February–15 March 2025, is a poignant visual document of the changes in social structures in rural Bengal in post-independent India.

On Process at the Chennai Photo Biennale

Kamayani Sharma Mar 19, 2025

Animated by the question ‘Why Photograph?’, the fourth edition of the Chennai Photo Biennale draws attention to the histories and fundamentals of the photographic process.

Cycles of Enclosure: Caste, Class and the Unequal Marriage “Market” in Jayant Somalkar’s Sthal

Sucheta Chakraborty Mar 21, 2025

Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, where it won the NETPAC award for best film from the Asia-Pacific region, Jayant Somalkar’s Marathi film Sthal (A Match) develops in between iterations of the ‘kanda-poha’ programme—formal meetings for bride selection that take their name from the popular Maharashtrian snack that is typically served in such situations

Fragmented Memory and Personal History: On Reena Mohan’s ‘Kamlabai’

Akshay Shelar Mar 26, 2025

The film Kamlabai (1992), directed by Reena Mohan, was screened at the NFDC-National Film Archives of India (as a part of the Film Circle screenings) on 8 March 2025. Mohan’s conversations with Kamlabai Gokhale, considered the first lady of Indian cinema, form the basis of this documentary.

Making a Photograph: Pictorialism, Craft and the Legacy of D.R. Mody

Avani Tandon Vieira Mar 29, 2025

Curated by Veerangana Kumari Solanki and conceptualised by Tapan Mody, grandson of D.R. Mody, the exhibition DADA - An Accidental Pictorialist situates the photographer’s work within the tradition of Pictorialism, a movement that privileged principles of beauty and composition over those of record-keeping, approaching the photographic medium as an art form rather than a tool for documentation.

On Manjolai Plantation Workers: Where Will They Go?

Sumaiya Mustafa Apr 18, 2025

Screened at the PK Rosy Documentary and Short Film Festival as part of the Vaanam Art Festival 2025 in celebration of Dalit History Month, Samuvel Arputharaj’s Manjolai (2024) is about five estates collectively referred to as “Manjolai”, which were once home to thousands of people in the hilly terrain of the Tirunelveli district but are now sparsely populated with only a handful of families.

Confronting Eviction in Manjolai: Care, Community and Resistance

Sumaiya Mustafa Apr 19, 2025

The Vaanam Art Festival is a tribute to centuries of Dalit resilience and lived experience. The festival included the PK Rosy Documentary and Short Film Festival, which screened Samuvel Arputharaj’s Manjolai (2024), the story of tea-garden workers in the hilly terrain of Manjolai in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

The Journey of a Printmaker: In Conversation with Anupam Sud

Adreeta Chakraborty May 26, 2025

Anupam Sud, whose career spans several momentous decades, was recently honoured with the Asia Arts Vanguard Award by the Asia Society India Centre at India Art Fair 2025. In this conversation with Adreeta Chakraborty, Sud reflects on the various conditions—socio-economic, cultural and, infrastructural—that shaped her journey as a printmaker and an artist.

"Cloth Protects Us": In Conversation with Jayeeta Chatterjee

Aparna Chivukula May 30, 2025

Over the years, printmaker Jayeeta Chatterjee’s practice has shifted from an interest in architecture towards “those who turn that architecture into a home,” with attention to the complex dynamics that underlie the dailiness of the domestic. In this interview, Chatterjee reflects on the impulses that drive her process of documenting and narrating women’s work and leisure, and the questions that are shaping her ongoing practice.

Builder Raj: The Perils of Homelessness in Jai Bhim Nagar

Soniya Pondcar Jun 11, 2025

The struggle of Jai Bhim Nagar’s residents against the builder Hiranandani, who has claimed to own the land, dates back to 2007 when their basti was set ablaze. Seven years later, in 2014, the masses were subject to eviction attempts, which picked up pace again in 2023. By June 2024, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had demolished the settlements, leaving the residents homeless overnight in the withering monsoon.

Neidhal Kaimanam: Coastal Lives, Recipes and Ecologies

Sumaiya Mustafa Jun 23, 2025

Neidhal Kaimanam is a bi-lingual coastal cookbook with photographs by M. Palani Kumar. Edited by Niranjana R, a scholar based out of London, and Bhagathsingh, a postdoctoral researcher from the French Institute of Pondicherry, the book merges the two defining aspects of the lives of fisherpeople—ecology and taste.

Memory, Materiality and Archive: Cinema and New Media Cultures

Pronita Tripathi Jul 03, 2025

Shared Domains: Objects, Materials and Aesthetics in Film and Media Cultures was a three-day (21–23 March, 2025) hybrid conference for young researchers, organised by the Department of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Estranged Fates: Alienation and Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan

Kshiraja Jul 12, 2025

Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s 1978 directorial debut, Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan (The Strange Fate of Arvind Desai), stands as a political work that leaves you with more questions than answers. It is also, perhaps, misunderstood in some respects.

Chardi Kala: Of Protest, People and Enduring Resilience

Banhi Sarkar Jul 18, 2025

Prateek Shekhar’s documentary Chardi Kala (2023) unfolds as a quiet, resolute portrait of collective endurance. The film was recently screened at the second edition of Parda Faash, a festival of films from and about South Asia, organised by the Asia Society India Centre in collaboration with Film Southasia and the National Centre for Performing Arts on 26 and 27 April 2025.

Discourse through the Collective: Museum-Making as Praxis at the Curators’ Hub

Upasana Das Aug 02, 2025

“An institution needs to protect its artists and their message and give them the capacity to still be artists,” reflected Mohamed Almusibli, director of Kunsthalle Basel, whose programming has drawn criticism for platforming voices on Palestine. At the Experimenter Curators’ Hub, such conversations echoed across global practices, confronting how institutions host, censor and care.

Hot Cakes and Histories: In Conversation with Sudha Padmaja Francis

Kshiraja Aug 07, 2025

Sudha Padmaja Francis’ documentary Ginger Biscuit (2024) explores the history of bakery culture in North Kerala through a delightful blend of history, memory and fiction. By positioning the film as an archive of lesser-known microhistories, Francis highlights the complex interplay of narratives and makes a case for unconventional forms of archiving these stories. In this interview with ASAP | art, Francis chats with us about her film, its many journeys and archiving histories from the ground.

Stolen: The Road to Paranoia

Dev Saraswat Aug 09, 2025

A one-of-a-kind thriller film in Hindi digital media, centering on a tribal woman’s bodily and moral journey, Karan Tejpal's Stolen (2023) subverts the traditional male-centric road movie genre to weave a contemporary intersection between multiple worlds of misfortune and systemic failure.

In Person: Nimaya Harris on the Minnette de Silva Archive

Mallika Visvanathan Aug 16, 2025

In this episode of In Person, Nimaya Harris speaks to us about the range of materials included in Minnette de Silva's archive, her connection with India, the transnational imagination evident in her practice and activating the archive by bringing her work into critical conversation with Sri Lanka’s art and architectural history.

In Pursuit of the Street: Aashim Tyagi’s Archive of India’s Typography

Daisy Gidwani Sep 06, 2025

Reflecting on signage as a product of the technology of its time and as a marker of transition in local cultures and economies, photographer Aashim Tyagi’s Street Type Archive documents an eclectic mix of materials, colours and influences expressed through diverse forms of typography and signage across India.

Migrants’ Pursuit: In Conversation with Thomas Sideris

Vishal George Sep 07, 2025

In this edited conversation with Thomas Sideris, he discusses his filmmaking process, the thread of workplace exploitation connecting his father and the migrants, the intersection of geopolitical conflict and migration, and the role of the Greek authorities in the Pylos tragedy.

The Grief of Khasi: Fileona Dkhar’s Ancestral Echoes

Ishtayaq Rasool Sep 11, 2025

Being screened at the EAEFF 2025, visual artist Fileona Dkhar’s film Ancestral Echoes (2022) explores the spirits that guide the Khasi hills in Meghalaya, capturing the haunting passage of time through landscapes.

On Indigenous Sporting Cultures: Mohammed Jassim’s Bar Saar

Vishal George Sep 12, 2025

Mohammed Jassim’s Bar Saar (2023), being screened at the Sharjah Film Platform (SFP) Montage and featuring at the Emami Art Experimental Film Festival (EAEFF) 2025, is a short documentary on the Bahraini tradition of donkey cart racing in the Saar region. The strained relationship between the film's protagonists--a father-son duo--provides insight into how difference is understood and expressed, across intergenerational participation in indigenous sporting cultures, to articulate the self in the face of Western hegemonic forces.

The Fate and Future of the Fakirani Jat: Sonum Sumaria’s Under the Open Sky

Radhika Saraf Sep 21, 2025

Sonum Sumaria's feature documentary Under the Open Sky (2024) reflects on the struggles of the Fakirani Jats in Kachchh, a nomadic pastoralist community who face threats to their livelihoods in a neoliberal economy where land is being allotted for mining and renewable energy at the expense of their rights to forest and grazing lands.

On Representation, Music and Kashmir: Songs of Paradise

Ayushi Koul Oct 11, 2025

Ayushi Koul writes about Danish Renzu’s film Songs of Paradise (2025), which follows Zeba, alias Noor Begum, a character partly inspired by Raj Begum. Koul contends that the film perpetuates the propagation of state-centric imageries, and does not go into the complexities of lives as lived in Kashmir—one of the most militarised zones in the world.

Nemahsis: On Music, Memory-Work and Palestinian Witness

Shefali Khan Oct 14, 2025

Nemah Hasan, known by the moniker Nemahsis, is a Palestinian artist based in Canada, who articulates Palestine’s living and breathing story of struggle—preserving history, demanding empathy, and amplifying resistance.

In Person: Mahishaa on Babasaheb in Bengaluru

Mallika Visvanathan Oct 29, 2025

In this edited conversation, Mahishaa, the founder of Neelavarana, an Ambedkarite artist collective, speaks about his collaborative filmmaking process and approach to form, his treatment of text as image, his relationship with the city of Bengaluru, and the necessity of Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi (DBA) collectivities.

On Dinosaur’s Egg: In Conversation with Sruthil Mathew

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 11, 2025

In this edited conversation, Sruthil Mathew speaks about the inspiration and research behind his film Dinosaur’s Egg, recently screened at the 14th Dharamsala International Film Festival. The filmmaker reflects on the role of dreams in his films and discusses how he uses soundscapes, mixed media and oral history to trace personal histories and memory.

In Person: Ketan Dua on Rafique Raat Ki Baahon Mein

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 13, 2025

In this edited conversation, Ketan Dua speaks about his film Rafique Raat Ki Baahon Mein (Rafique in the Embrace of the Night, 2024), which is part of the larger project The Mapmaker from Baghdad. He also reflects on the collaborative process, the film’s hybrid treatment, forms of archiving, and his relationship with the city of Mumbai.

Stepping Out Into the World: The Films of Mark LaPore

Arindam Sen Nov 14, 2025

A key protagonist of American avant-garde cinema, Mark LaPore reimagined the representation of the ‘other’ in ethnographic filmmaking and within Western epistemological systems.

In Person: Surabhi Sharma on Music in a Village Named 1PB

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 18, 2025

In this edited conversation, Surabhi Sharma, director of Music in a Village Named 1PB (2025), speaks about her journey documenting the Mir community in Rajasthan, and reflects on exploring the relationship between labour and music.

Reproductive Work and Sexual Labour: Mira Nair’s India Cabaret

Sanjita Majumder Nov 22, 2025

Mira Nair’s India Cabaret (1985) is an early feminist documentary film that examines the sexual economy of Bombay’s dance bars and prostitution.

On Cycle Mahesh: In Conversation with Suhel Banerjee

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 28, 2025

In this edited conversation, Suhel Banerjee speaks about Cycle Mahesh (2024), which traces Mahesh Jena’s seven-day bicycle journey from Maharashtra to Odisha during the lockdown, reflecting on the notion of development and the alienation of labour in cities.

The Politics of Memory and Witnessing: Deconstructing the Archive with Sasha Huber and Siona O’Connell

Birat Bijay Ojha Dec 06, 2025

In their talks at the sixth edition of Photo Kathmandu (PhotoKTM6), Sasha Huber and Siona O’Connell engage with archives and images shaped by violence, exclusion and colonial power, questioning whose stories remain visible within racist historical narratives and urgent us to be witness, not accomplice, to injustice.

The Place of the Image: In Conversation with yasmine eid-sabbagh

Mallika Visvanathan Dec 08, 2025

At PhotoKTM6, Possible and Imaginary Lives by yasmine eid-sabbagh and Rozen Quéré draws on the personal archives of a Palestinian-Lebanese family. eid-sabbagh speaks about the politics of archiving and photography as well as the urgent need for action.

Against Image Reproduction: On Colonial Violence, Indigeneity and Sovereignty

From the Editor Jan 09, 2026

As the year begins amid renewed neocolonial assaults on sovereignty and natural resources, this piece reflects on how anti-colonial legacies are remembered. Our editor examines the struggle to exist beyond imposed images—as a self grounded in lived reality and future possibility.

The Land Sings Back: Visions of Indigenous Futures

Riddhi Dastidar Jan 10, 2026

The Land Sings Back (2025), recently on view at Drawing Room, London, brought together thirteen artists from the African, Caribbean and South Asian diasporas as a potent instance of Black and Brown intimacies, marked by solidarity in action and ambition in imagination, echoing philosophies found in Indigenous cultures that move beyond an anthropocentric lens.

A Belief in Co-Existence: On Ajay Dhoke’s Waghoba

Daisy Gidwani Jan 12, 2026

Ajay Dhoke’s photo essay Waghoba (2018–ongoing) documents Tadoba in Maharashtra, a dense forest landscape inhabited by Gond communities—where quiet markers of identity and worship converge—serving both as protective signs to deter tigers from entering villages and as memorials for those lost to attacks.

Diyaari Puja: A Post-Harvest Ritual of Gratitude

Sakhi Subramaniam Chowla Jan 19, 2026

Diyaari is a post-harvest festival celebrated in the Bastar region of southern Chhattisgarh. Held soon after the paddy harvest, it brings families together to thank their ancestral deities, cattle, land and forests, marking a modest yet meaningful beginning that leads into the larger Madai Mela celebrations.

Working Collectively: On the KTM Assembly

Mallika Visvanathan Jan 24, 2026

As part of PhotoKTM6, Prathama Raghavan and yasmine eid-sabbagh facilitated the KTM Assembly, bringing together a cohort of artists, cultural organisations and organisers for five days of shared experiences and collective reflection.

Where Walls Remember: Mritunjay Kumar’s House of Blue

Ayushi Koul Feb 12, 2026

Mritunjay Kumar and his team—Anish Victor, Lakshmi P, and Priti Bakalkar—presented House of Blue at the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation (SSAF) Lab in New Delhi on 1 November 2025. Inspired by the government quarters of Bokaro Steel Plant, where Kumar's own family lived until his father's retirement, the performance revealed how houses are repositories of memory.

The Land and Its People: Nepali Artists at PhotoKTM6

Alfa M. Shakya Feb 18, 2026

All That the Land Holds, hosted at the Nepal Art Council (NAC) as part of PhotoKTM6, featured eight Nepali visual artists. The first part of this essay reflects on the works of four artists as they invite us to dwell on the notion of development and its costs.

All That the Land Holds: Nepali Artists at PhotoKTM6

Alfa M. Shakya Feb 19, 2026

The second part of this essay explores the works of four of eight Nepali artists exhibiting in All That the Land Holds, as part of PhotoKTM6. Engaging with the politics of land, the artists scrutinise the dichotomy of nature and culture as it is expressed through language, records and development.

A Star Named Arundhati: From the Family Archive to a Women's History of Cinema

Ananya Dasgupta Feb 20, 2026

Marking the birth centenary of Arundhati Devi, the exhibition A Star Named Arundhati curated by Mrinalini Vasudevan and Tapati Guha-Thakurta chronicles the singer, actress and director's multifaceted career. Ananya Dasgupta locates Arundhati as a public figure around whom ideas of modernity, vernacular femininity and civility coalesce.

In Person: Basir Mahmood on A Body Bleeds More Than It Contains

Radhika Saraf Feb 26, 2026

Recently exhibited at the ninth edition of Colomboscope, Rhythm Alliances, Basir Mahmood’s multi-channel video installation A Body Bleeds More Than It Contains (2026) engages with the demolition of Bari Studios, a central production site in Lahore for Lollywood films since the early 1950s.