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सिनेमा और रेडियो: अंतर्माध्यम जुगलबंदी

Ravikant Jan 19, 2021

दक्षिण एशिया में देखने-सुनने वाली चीज़ यानि सिनेमा को 'सिर्फ़ सुनने' का तगड़ा रिवाज रहा है, क्योंकि गीत-संगीत का सबसे बड़ा ज़ख़ीरा यहाँ फ़िल्मी ही है. फ़िल्मी गीतों को सुनने के माध्यम महँगे ग्रामोफ़ोन की अपेक्षा आसानी से और सस्ते में उपलब्ध रेडियो व ट्रांज़िस्टर रहे हैं. यानि सिनेमा और रेडियो के बीच इस ऐतिहासिक अंतर्माध्यम जुगलबंदी के चलते उनको साथ पढ़े जाने की ज़रूरत है.

Archiving Film: Notes on Project Cinema City

Ketaki Varma Jan 19, 2021

Project Cinema City (2008-13) is arguably the most ambitious of all the artistic initiatives concerned with documenting cinema in India so far.

Film as Art (Objects): Notes on Project Cinema City

Ketaki Varma Feb 08, 2021

Of the several ideas proposed by Project Cinema City, many were concerned with the place of the still image within the visual culture of cinema.

Lobby Cards: Preserving Cinema through Still Image

Ketaki Varma Feb 09, 2021

Before the age of television and the internet, much of film publicity relied on the still image; posters, lobby cards, song booklets, postcards and other printed material often featured photographs from the film.

Looking Beyond the Cinematic: Sabeena Gadihoke’s Selling Soap and Stardom

Ketaki Varma Feb 15, 2021

In 2010, Tasveer Ghar: A House of Pictures invited scholars from around the world to comment on entrepreneur and art connoisseur Priya Paul’s collection of popular Indian art, which was digitised in 2008.

सिनेमा और रेडियो: अंतर्माध्यम जुगलबंदी - II

Ravikant Feb 16, 2021

फ़िल्मी गीतों के प्रति आकाशवाणी के सख़्त ऐतिहासिक रवैये के उलट व्यावसायिक सिनेमा में आम तौर पर रेडियो को बेपनाह मोहब्बत के साथ पेश किया गया है, जो सिनेमा के लिए रेडियो की अहमियत का सुबूत है.

New Practices of Narration: Looking at Anglo-Indian Photographs

Ankan Kazi Feb 20, 2021

Several photographic projects grappled with and against these processes of fixing the image of the Anglo-Indian community.

Self as Other: The Cinematic Space of Kiran Subbaiah

Anisha Baid Feb 22, 2021

Kiran Subbaiah’s oeuvre, evolving through diverse media forms—from sculptural to interactive websites and video installations—is often overlooked in the writing of India’s contemporary art history.

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.

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.

Towards an Adivasi Futurism: An Interview with Subash Thebe Limbu

Anisha Baid Mar 16, 2021

Subash Thebe Limbu is a Nepalese indigenous artist who works with sound, film, performance and painting.

Between Documentary and Speculative: An Interview with Subash Thebe Limbu

Anisha Baid Mar 17, 2021

In this continuing conversation with artist Subash Thebe Limbu, we explore the various material and mediatic negotiations involved in the movement of Indigenous Futurisms.

Sohrab Hura: The Historian, the Storyteller and the Idiot Photographer

Ketaki Varma Mar 20, 2021

Photographer Sohrab Hura’s latest exhibition Spill, recently concluded at the Experimenter Gallery in Kolkata, was aptly titled. The expansive exhibition was concerned with excavating Hura’s fifteen years of practice.

Perennial, Plastic Blooms: Zoya Siddiqui’s A distant Place

Arushi Vats Mar 31, 2021

Titled A distant Place, the online showcase of Zoya Siddiqui’s work, curated by Arnika Ahldag and Vaishnavi Kambadur at Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru begins with this rumination on the fragmented meanings and locations of “home.”

The Power of Moving Image: An Extract from Filmi Jagat

Editorial Apr 09, 2021

Filmi Jagat: A Scrapbook (Shared Universe of Early Hindi Cinema) was published by Niyogi Books in 2014 and presents the dynamic contours of graphic authorship by an elusive compiler, Mangaldas V. Lohana.

Notions of Nation: A Review of John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus

Ankan Kazi Apr 15, 2021

John W. Hood’s book The Bleeding Lotus on the history of Bangladeshi nationalism on film is one of the few overviews on Bangladeshi cinema available in English.

Nationalist Cinemas of Bangladesh: A Discussion on John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus

Ankan Kazi Apr 16, 2021

In this continuing discussion on John W. Hood’s The Bleeding Lotus, we focus on how his analysis foregrounds some of the important themes in Bangladesh’s nationalist cinema.

Big Powers, Small People: Revisiting Rashid Rana’s Ommatidia Series

Ketaki Varma Apr 17, 2021

From a distance, the portraits by Rashid Rana have the slightly grainy appearance of pixelated photographs. As one zooms in, the “pixels” are revealed to be photographs of thousands of ordinary young men from the streets of Lahore in Pakistan.

Art and the Everyday: Abdul Halik Azeez’s day dreamer you are

Ketaki Varma May 14, 2021

In the second part of a conversation between Sri Lankan artist Abdul Halik Azeez and Ketaki Varma, they continue their discussion about his recent solo day dreamer you are.

Cinema’s Original Illusion: Savinder Bual’s Mechanical Animations

Anisha Baid May 23, 2021

Savinder Bual’s work investigates the still and moving image using unusual and everyday objects as well as special hand-crafted mechanisms.

No End in Sight: Growing up in War-Torn Afghanistan

Sukanya Baskar Jun 03, 2021

The title of Aziz Hazara's solo exhibition No End in Sight is an evocation of the fatigue of a generation that grew up in a war-torn Afghanistan (that Hazara as well as the curator, Muheb Esmat belong to).

Technologies of Vision: A Conversation with Artist Aziz Hazara and Curator Muheb Esmat

Sukanya Baskar Jun 04, 2021

This conversation with artist Aziz Hazara and curator Muheb Esmat, came out of Sukanya Baskar's experience of having viewed No End in Sight (2020), an exhibition at the Hessel Museum in New York.

The Thrill of Acquisition: Pelin Esmer’s The Collector

Arushi Vats Jun 02, 2021

In the eleventh minute of The Collector (2002)—a documentary produced, directed, and shot by Pelin Esmer—we enter the promised land: an apartment in Istanbul packed to the rafters with objects of varying sizes and forms.

Traces of Occupation: Kashmir, A State of Erasure

Sukanya Deb Jun 06, 2021

“Trauma is viewed as pre-verbal and timeless—still and urgent,” reads the description of video works Nishan I (2007–12) and Nishan II (2019) by Desire Machine Collective.

Freedom on Screen: Bangladesh's Short Film as Alternative Cinema

Ankan Kazi Jun 08, 2021

The evolution of the short film form in Bangladesh reveals the traces of this struggle between filmmakers trying to wrest an autonomous form from the predations of state control.

Resisting the Algorithm: Tara Kelton’s Guided Tour

Anisha Baid Jun 19, 2021

Guided Tour is a series of videos by Tara Kelton, made with screenshots of popular tourist sites in India taken from the Street View feature on Google Maps.

Still/Moving: The Spectacle of Film in The Cinema Travellers

Ketaki Varma Jun 24, 2021

The opening sequence of Amit Madheshiya and Shirley Abraham’s award-winning film The Cinema Travellers (2016) is electric. We see a man at work attempting to screen a film in what appears to be a tent in rural India.

Song Narratives: Molla Sagar’s Documentary Films

Veeranganakumari Solanki Jun 25, 2021

Inspired by Ritwik Ghatak’s cinematic ideologies, Molla Sagar’s work explores cultural and ethnic practices that speak about basic human rights and injustices in everyday encounters.

Time, Malady and Detritus: Acts of Care in Naeem Mohaiemen’s Jole Dobe Na

Najrin Islam Jul 01, 2021

In Naeem Mohaiemen’s Jole Dobe Na (Those Who Do Not Drown), the protagonists Jyoti and Sufiya traverse the expansive landscape of an abandoned hospital in Kolkata.

Forensic Time and Territorial Dislocations: Exploring the Trauma of Exile through Google Earth

Najrin Islam Jul 24, 2021

Palestinian filmmaker and media artist Razan AlSalah takes the tool of cartography and counters its imperial roots to reinterpret optical regimes of violence.

Imagining Palestinian Statehood: Arabfuturism and the Scope of Radical Fictions

Najrin Islam Jul 25, 2021

Coined by Jordanian artist Sulaïman Majali, the term “Arabfuturism” refers to the anticipation of a future beyond the hegemonic, Eurocentric representations of the Pan-Arab world.

Photographing a Chronic Catastrophe: Rearticulating Gaza through Images

Najrin Islam Jul 26, 2021

Palestinian artists are reconstructing Gaza through images that refuse to spectacularise the violence and the archetype of the “helpless refugee”.

Surveying the Settler: The Neighbour Before the House by Shaina Anand

Ankan Kazi Jul 29, 2021

Shaina Anand directed Al Jaar Qabla al Daar in which eight Palestinian families are provided with a controllable CCTV camera for a closer inspection of their neighbourhoods.

Glitz, Glamour and Guns: Codification of Gender in Showgirls of Pakistan

Sukanya Deb Jul 30, 2021

Showgirls of Pakistan, a documentary film by Saad Khan, introduces us to the contemporary world of Pakistani mujra through the performers Afreen Khan, Uzma Khan and Reema Jaan.

Performance and Evidence: The Heterogenous Image in Showgirls of Pakistan

Sukanya Deb Jul 31, 2021

In this continuing discussion on Saad Khan’s Showgirls of Pakistan, we look at how it reproduces the spectacle of 1980s Lollywood and the subsequent street and popular culture.

The Figure and the Apparition: Mochu’s Reading of K. Ramanujam

Sukanya Deb Aug 07, 2021

Mochu's film A Gathering at the Carnival Shop ties together archival material in the form of photographs and drawings with interviews of close contemporaries and comrades of K. Ramanujam.

Post-Industrial Loneliness: Through the Lens of Cat Sticks

Sukanya Deb Aug 11, 2021

In this interview, Ronny Sen speaks about his film Cat Sticks, its context and raising awareness about addiction.

An Index of Unfinished Histories: Mariam Ghani on Afghan Cinema

Najrin Islam Aug 13, 2021

Mariam Ghani's What We Left Unfinished interrogates the idealised Afghan national imaginary by resuscitating five unifinished films from Afghanistan's communist phase.

Mobilising Absence: Mariam Ghani on the Precarity of Archival Practices

Najrin Islam Aug 14, 2021

What We Left Unfinished emerged out of director Mariam Ghani’s engagement with the Afghan Film archives on a digitisation initiative meant to reinsert Afghan films into wider circulation.

Sounding the Future: Queerness and Post-Human Love in Tejal Shah’s Video Art

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 15, 2021

Identifying as ecosexual, Tejal Shah’s interests lie in the areas of sexuality, gender and consciousness as well as exploring interspecies relationships between ecologies.

The (Un)Making of Memories: Piotr Cieplak’s The Faces We Lost

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 23, 2021

In The Faces We Lost—the 2017 documentary directed and produced by Piotr Cieplak—Paul Rukesha of the Genocide Archive speaks of the incurable affliction of living through the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.

Remembering in Rwanda: The Sanctity of the Aftermath in The Faces We Lost

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 24, 2021

In the documentary The Faces We Lost (2017), Piotr Cieplak highlights the family album as an object retrieved from obliteration and as simultaneously retrieving memories.

Ways of Being (In a City): Review of Delhi: Looking Out/Looking In

Annalisa Mansukhani Aug 28, 2021

In the summer of 2021, Aperture magazine published a volume titled Delhi: Looking Out/Looking In, guest-edited by curator Rahaab Allana.

The Clarity of Delirium: Avijit Mukul Kishore’s Squeeze Lime in Your Eye

Ankan Kazi Sep 04, 2021

Kaushik Mukhopadhyay seems to be invested in the performance of outsiderness and eccentricity, but is also equally committed to introducing notes of apocalyptic thinking, obsolescence and unfulfillment in the lives of the objects that he “invents” through finding, reworking and reappropriating.

Modelling an Image: Photographing the Bengali Actress

Ankan Kazi Sep 07, 2021

In her essay “Capturing Stars: Bengali Actresses Through the Camera of Nemai Ghosh,” Sabeena Gadihoke presents a range of contexts that influenced the images of women taken by photographers like Ghosh and filmmakers like Satyajit Ray.

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.

Desert of the Real: Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar

Ankan Kazi Sep 27, 2021

Safar-e Ghandehar (Kandahar, 2001) was shot in the borderlands of Iran and Afghanistan, using a semi-fictitious trope to represent the reality of the landscape.

Learning to See: Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Afghan Alphabet

Ankan Kazi Sep 28, 2021

Mohsen Makhmalbaf shot Afghan Alphabet late in the year 2001 after Kandahar had been screened at the Cannes Film Festival and then across European and American theatres.

Anonya: Tayeba Begum Lipi’s Work with Dhaka's Transgender Community

Veeranganakumari Solanki Sep 30, 2021

One of the founding members of Dhaka’s Britto Arts Trust in 2002, Tayeba Begums Lipi’s work explores the body as a site—locating the performativity of gender within social expectations.

An Embattled Territory: On Afghan Cinema and Roya Sadat’s Feminist Gaze

Najrin Islam Oct 09, 2021

Roya Sadat’s first film, Seh Noktah (2003), was penned clandestinely during the Taliban era. It was converted into a film after their fall, using equipment borrowed from journalists.

Digital Flânerie: The Garga Archives in the Contemporary

Najrin Islam Oct 13, 2021

Initially conceived as a book, the Garga Archives emerged from sustained interaction between Anuj Malhotra of the Lightcube film collective and Donabelle Garga—wife of late filmmaker and historian Bhagwan Das Garga.

A Preoccupation with Time: Revisiting Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages

Mallika Visvanathan Oct 14, 2021

Artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar’s body of work—spanning four decades—has consistently responded to conflict by presenting and archiving evidence.

Acts of Witnessing: Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages

Mallika Visvanathan Oct 15, 2021

Amar Kanwar’s The Torn First Pages provides interesting parallels to the present moment as Myanmar once again finds itself under military dictatorship.

Between Seeing and Being Seen: Still City and Its Portrait of Mumbai

Annalisa Mansukhani Oct 25, 2021

Five student filmmakers proposed this filmic enquiry as a response to a prompt on the city’s streets that invited them to think about spaces of accessibility and inclusivity.

Relating to the World: Payal Kapadia’s The Last Mango Before the Monsoon

Ankan Kazi Oct 26, 2021

Payal Kapadia’s experimental narrative short The Last Mango Before the Monsoon (2014) describes a rich, textural experience of the losses entailed in our constant departures from the natural life of the world.

Bridging the Distance: Priya Sen and Nicolás Grandi’s Faasla

Mallika Visvanathan Nov 05, 2021

Faasla (2020) emerges as a result of ten years of friendship and collaboration between Priya Sen, a Delhi-based filmmaker, and Nicolás Grandi, an Argentinian transmedia practitioner.

The Loss of Hindustan: The Miniaturist of Junagadh by Kaushal Oza

Ankan Kazi Nov 06, 2021

Kaushal Oza’s short film The Miniaturist of Junagadh is an adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s story The Invisible Collection, in which a Berlin-based art dealer meets an old client who has declined into poverty and blindness.

A Tree at the End of the World: Salomé Jashi’s Taming the Garden

Annalisa Mansukhani Nov 08, 2021

Quietly cryptic in its cinematic absurdity, Taming the Garden is a film by Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi that builds the strange story of a billionaire who collects trees from the countryside for his own private garden-island.

Peripheral Lives: Borderlands by Samarth Mahajan

Niyati Bhat Nov 09, 2021

Directed by Samarth Mahajan, Borderlands bears witness to the experiences of six characters and how they navigate personal, societal and political borders in the everyday.

World-Changing: Disability, Debility and Cinema in We Make Film

Arushi Vats Nov 10, 2021

We Make Film (2021) throws a radical premise at its audience: what if frameworks of knowing and experiencing disability require approaches that exceed accommodationism?

Revolution in a Family Album: Firouzeh Khosrovani’s Radiograph of a Family

Samira Bose Nov 11, 2021

Radiograph of a Family is the filmmaker’s personal foray into the shared lives and experiences of her parents reconstructed through fragments of family photographs and videos from public archives.

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.

Fluvial Embodiments: On Abhinava Bhattacharyya’s Jamnapaar

Najrin Islam Nov 23, 2021

“Jamnapaar” translates to “trans-Yamuna,” and refers to the eponymous river in a state of passage—running through Delhi, dividing the city into two relatively favourable halves.

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.

Linguistic Knots and Enduring Images: On Spandan Banerjee's English India

Najrin Islam Dec 10, 2021

Spandan Banerjee’s English India begins with the nuances of the eponymous language as they are passed through generations in the Anglophone academia in Calcutta, a remnant of said instruction in the former imperial capital.

Frames of Reference: On Saba Hasan’s Water Suites

Ankan Kazi Dec 16, 2021

VAICA’s curated programme, Fields of Vision, fills a crucial gap in contemporary art’s engagement with the experimental practices of moving-image-making.

Screens of Encounter: Reading Interiorities in Amol K. Patil’s Study Oneself

Annalisa Mansukhani Dec 20, 2021

For artist Amol K. Patil, the body extends, beyond these questions, into a political gesture that asserts the right to occupy space.

Planetary Visions: On Manjot Kaur’s Constant Motion

Mallika Visvanathan Dec 23, 2021

Manjot Kaur’s diverse practice involves different media such as painting and drawing, as well as digital video, performance and performative installations.

Unsettling the Native: Documentary Films on Political Violence

Ankan Kazi Dec 27, 2021

On November 2021, the Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation had organised a panel discussion to bring into focus a series of documentary films that addressed the complex legacies of partition and communal violence in Eastern India.

Nationhood, Interrupted: On Moonis Ahmad Shah’s Material for a Love Letter to Comrades from the Subcontinent

Najrin Islam Dec 29, 2021

Across a diptych-like frame, Moonis Ahmad Shah places disparate elements in dialogue with one another to foreground the absurdity embedded in the arrangement of landscapes per territorial politics.

Framing Interiority: Medical Imaging in VAICA’s Fields of Vision

Mallika Visvanathan Dec 31, 2021

In Failure of an Unplanned, Khushbu Patel employs the medical imaging of a Transvaginal Ultrasound Scan of a human foetus.

Classification of the Public Citizenry: Data Institutions in Seismic Vibrato

Sukanya Deb Jan 04, 2022

Karthik KG’s video work Seismic Vibrato shows a revolving view of a three-dimensional dot-cloud model of the Supreme Court of India enmeshed with an eerie 8-bit soundtrack.

Swing Time: Ayisha Abraham’s Found Footage Movies and the Memory of a Medium

Ankan Kazi Jan 06, 2022

“Orbits of Desire” focused on the nature of media that informed image-making practices about the body, performances and gender.

Re-Mapping the Familiar: In Conversation with Bharati Kapadia, Anuj Daga and Chandita Mukherjee

Najrin Islam Jan 07, 2022

A public platform that brings together video practitioners of Indian origin, the Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists (VAICA) Festival’s second cycle ran online from 20 November to 18 December 2021, on the principle of free access.

Against the Grain: In Conversation with Bharati Kapadia, Anuj Daga and Chandita Mukherjee

Najrin Islam Jan 08, 2022

In this episode of ASAP Cast, we continue our discussion with Bharati Kapadia, Anuj Daga and Chandita Mukherjee―the curators of the second edition of the Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists (VAICA) Festival, Fields of Vision.

On Heterotopias: Concluding Panel Discussion at VAICA’s Fields of Vision

Mallika Visvanathan Jan 12, 2022

The concluding panel discussion for the final week of VAICA included the artists Amitesh Grover, Babu Eshwar Prasad and Sheba Chhachhi, whose works were screened through the week.

Fictive Historiographies: In Conversation with Parvathi and Nayantara Nayar

Mallika Visvanathan Jan 25, 2022

The artist Parvathi Nayar and researcher and performer Nayantara Nayar discusses the work “Chicken Run,” which excavates a history of the Korean War through its connection to India.

Visions of the Apocalypse: Ecological Disaster through Social Media and Myth

Sukanya Deb Jan 29, 2022

Paribartana Mohanty’s video work Four Songs of Apocalypse (2021) uses mythology and folk traditions to look at narratives of disaster.

Between Motion and Stillness: In Conversation with Priyank Gothwal

Annalisa Mansukhani Mar 03, 2022

The practice of visual artist Priyank Gothwal occupies an intermediary position between the possibilities of still and moving images.

Epics on Celluloid: Sinhala Cinema After the Civil War

Pramodha Weerasekera Mar 05, 2022

Ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhala community and the minority Tamil community has long dominated Sri Lanka’s politics and history.

Moving Past the Feeling: Nostalgia for the Future and Lovely Villa

Arushi Vats Mar 08, 2022

To reproduce a specific vision of the world in miniature is one way to describe the housing project which is at the centre of the documentary Lovely Villa: Architecture as Autobiography.

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.

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.

Ecological Fiction: In Conversation with Noémie Goudal

Rahaab Allana Jul 07, 2022

In her series titled Phoenix (2021) along with the moving image installation Inhale/Exhale (2021) seen at the Rencontres d’Arles, Noémie Goudal engages with staging and illusion.

About/Despite/Besides Love: On Archana Phadke’s Inward Gaze

Najrin Islam Jul 18, 2022

About Love focuses its lens on the Phadke family in all their idiosyncrasies, as the director straddles the role of filmmaker, daughter and sibling during the course of its making for over three years.

Alternating Currents: On Writing with Fire

Ankan Kazi Aug 01, 2022

Writing with Fire focuses on a crucial moment of transition as Khabar Lahariya prepares to “go digital” after 2016. Harnessing technological change requires a complex negotiation between social capital, access and educational privilege—and these rural reporters are occasionally taught by city-based feminists about such crucial changes—all of which is on powerful display in the film’s narrative.

Projecting the Gaze: A Conversation with Sibi Sekar

Ankan Kazi Aug 25, 2022

While Sibi Sekar’s short experimental feature You Are, I Am has been previously discussed, the filmmaker also spoke to Ankan Kazi about some of the influences underlying his work of developing a critical cinematic gaze to refuse the normative framework of the visual pleasure in looking.

Virtual Memories: On Suneil Sanzgiri's Letter From Your Far-off Country

Ankan Kazi Aug 29, 2022

Suneil Sanzgiri’s experimental film essay Letter From Your Far-off Country, assumes the shape of an epistolary meditation and dialogue on the growing threats to Indian democracy over the last few years, and its threatening attempts to eclipse the radical pasts of the country.

Amorar Akhyan: Dilara Begum Jolly’s Tales of the Undead

Ankan Kazi Sep 01, 2022

Dilara Begum Jolly's film Amorar Akhyan lies at the cusp of performance and video art, where both forms are utilised to arrive at a more poetic rendering of a haunted space in national memory.

Gardeners in the Wasteland: On Ishaan Ghose’s Jhilli (Discards)

Ankan Kazi Sep 05, 2022

Ishaan Ghose’s film unveils a delirious and slurred narrative of a group of friends who drift in and out of each other’s lives as they attempt to make a living from Dhapa, or dream-up hare-brained schemes of escape that are doomed to failure.

Creation Myths: On Vipin Vijay’s Anthropocene Relooked

Ankan Kazi Sep 08, 2022

The big questions about civilizational beginnings and their difficult existence in our besieged contemporary moment find a clearer statement of purpose in Vipin Vijay's documentary essay.

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.

Bigamy, Scandal and the Homewrecker Film: Bollywood in the 1980s

Silpa Mukherjee Sep 13, 2022

Reports in film magazines in the 1980s voiced the continuous anxiety of what might become of “our film culture” if homewrecking and bigamy were normalised, and thus made respectable.

Lost Days: On Ekta Mittal’s Gumnaam Din

Ankan Kazi Sep 15, 2022

Outside the stream of data and hypervisible melodramas that frame the stories of migrant labour in India, Gumnaam Din attempts to restore some dignity to their narratives of searching and failure, even as they are haunted by the spectre of disappearance.

Urf | A.K.A.: On Economies of Adoration in Bollywood

Najrin Islam Nov 04, 2022

Geetika Narang Abbasi’s documentary, Urf | A.K.A. (2022), delves into this economy of admiration. She focuses her lens on the purported lookalikes of Bollywood stars and their individual trajectories.

Pedro: On Vigilante Pursuit and Its Persistence

Najrin Islam Nov 05, 2022

A thematic extension of the director’s short films Kurli and Distant, Natesh Hegde's Pedro is a portrayal of relationships that are determined by caste (and by extension, class).

Virtual Virtues: On Seemab Gul’s Mulaqat

Ankan Kazi Nov 07, 2022

Seemab Gul’s Mulaqat (2021), titled Sandstorm in English, is the story of a young woman who gets into trouble while still at school, in the Pakistani city of Karachi.

Travels with Women: On Courtney Stephens’ Terra Femme

Ankan Kazi Nov 08, 2022

Courtney Stephens’ essay film uses archival and found footage shot almost entirely by amateur female filmmakers between the 1920s and 1950s.

Documenting Transit: In Conversation with Shishir Jha

Najrin Islam Nov 09, 2022

In conversation with Najrin Islam at the Dharamshala International Film Festival, Jha talks about the ethnographic groundwork he laid for his docu-fiction film Dharti Latar Re Horo (Tortoise Under the Earth, 2022)

Perusing Tukdam Deaths: In Conversation with Donagh Coleman

Najrin Islam Nov 10, 2022

In this conversation, Donagh Coleman talks about the fieldwork and research conducted for his documentary Tukdam: Between Worlds, which delves into the Tibetan Buddhist culture around death through the specific practice of tukdam.

The Beast Named Development: Shishir Jha’s Dharti Latar Re Horo

Jigisha Bhattacharya Nov 11, 2022

Dharti Latar Re Horo (Tortoise Under the Earth, 2022), directed by Shishir Jha, explores the tale of an adivasi family who have lost their daughter in the uranium mines in Jharkhand.

Of Quietude, Wandering and Resolution: Achal Mishra’s Dhuin

Annalisa Mansukhani Nov 12, 2022

Situated in Darbhanga in Bihar, Dhuin (2022) depicts, in Achal Mishra’s characteristic poesy, the humility and frustration of indecision arising from having to choose between individual dreams and familial obligations.

The Whole World is Watching: Franz Böhm’s Dear Future Children

Jigisha Bhattacharya Nov 14, 2022

The feature documentary Dear Future Children (2021), directed by Franz Böhm, traces the wide ranging youth-led protests against injustices around the world.

Tending to Birds of Prey: In Conversation with Mohammad Saud and Salik Rehman

Najrin Islam Nov 15, 2022

In this conversation with Najrin Islam, Saud and Salik (cast of All That Breathes by Shaunak Sen) talk about their work in depth, addressing the concerns that continue to inform their obsession with saving black kites.

Joyland: The Slippery Terrain between Tradition and Aspiration

Najrin Islam Nov 18, 2022

In Saim Sadiq's film, a quiet resilience surfaces through the protagonists, each of whom straddles traditional conformism and present-day aspirations.

In Fragments: A Night of Knowing Nothing

Najrin Islam Nov 28, 2022

Using an epistolary address, A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021) directed by Payal Kapadia initially meanders through the by-lanes and hallways of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune.

Seeing through Censorship: Wakilur Rahman’s Censored Image

Ankan Kazi Dec 01, 2022

For photographer and artist Wakilur Rahman, censorship in Bangladesh is born of the conflict between individual expression and the state’s control of knowledge.

In Person: Ikamo Tlalli—Earthless by Mónica Alcázar-Duarte

Arundhati Chauhan Mar 17, 2023

In Ikamo-Tlalli, Alcázar-Duarte dons the figure of the Beekeeper, dressed in bright red and disrupting the green and earth-hued camouflage around her.

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.