An ikebana demonstration in glass containers by Ms Makiko Morange, master of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana

Introduction: Smt. Veena Dass, Director, Sogetsu School, New Delhi

Glass containers are rarely used in Ikebana as the fixation can be seen through the glass so kenzans (flower holders with spikes) nor cross bar fixings are normally used. The glass containers that Ms Morange will use at her demonstration have been specially designed. She will be joined during the demonstration by Mr. Tomio Kurata, Manager of the glass factory where the vases are made, will explain the procedure.

(Collaboration: Sogetsu School, New Delhi; and Embassy of Japan)

Zoom Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89834418065?pwd=ZVFxR083bnBGaDYydEhjV3F0c1NEd…
Meeting ID: 898 3441 8065 
Passcode: Sogetsu
 

The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told
By Neerja Mattoo (Aleph Book Company, New Delhi: 2022)

Discussants: Dr. Roop K. Bhat, author, linguist, translator and media freelancer; Shri Abid Ahmad, writer, poet, translator, columnist and Editor; Ms Niyati Bhat, writer, Editor; and Prof. Neerja Mattoo, academic, writer, poet and critic and author of the book

Moderator: Prof. Sanjukta Dasgupta, academic, poet, translator and Convenor, English Advisory Board, Sahitya Akademi

Registration link

Tashi and the Monk (UK) | Click here to watch
(39 min; 2014; English/Tibetan/Hindi with English subtitles)
Directors: Andrew Hinton & Johnny Burke

Multiple award winner including Best Directing Award, Autrans Mountain Film Festival 2015; Audience Award for Best Short, Independent Film Festival of Boston 2015; Emmy for Outstanding Short Documentary, News & Documentary Emmy Awards 2016; Jury Prize for Best Short Documentary, Prescott Film Festival 2015; among others

On a remote mountaintop a brave social experiment is taking place. Committed to raising children with love and compassion, former Buddhist monk Lobsang Phuntsok attempts to heal his own childhood abandonment by adopting 85 unwanted children and growing them as a family at Jhamtse Gatsal, a remote children's community in the foothills of the Himalayas. The film follows Jhamtse's newest arrival, a wild and troubled 5-year-old girl named Tashi, as she learns what love is and how it can help her to heal. 

https://vimeo.com/242367699

The Lost World of Pompeii | Click here to watch
(48 min; 2016; English)
Director: Michael Wadding

Pompeii, buried by an eruption from Mount Vesuvius back in 79 AD is a city which was frozen in time providing us with a shocking window into the lost world of the Romans but that window may close before all of her secrets are revealed as the city of Pompeii comes under treat from all sides.

Today the greatest mystery may be that the same force that destroyed Pompeii the first time might now be rumbling back to life.

With this scary possibility experts are now trying to solve any lingering riddles before it is too late and with the help of new technologies and scientific detective work this film attempts to uncover what Pompeii was like on the eve of its destruction. We discover who these people were and how they lived before their lives tragically came to an abrupt end.

https://documentaryheaven.com/lost-world-pompeii/

The Curse of the Methuselah Tree | Click here to watch
(50 min; 2007; English)
Director: Ian Duncan

On a desolate mountain top in California lives the world's oldest organism - a gnarled and twisted bristlecone pine. The scientist who discovered the tree gave it the name Methuselah. It was a seedling when the Egyptian pyramids were being built and a mature tree at the time of Christ. It is now over 4,000 years old.

The Curse of the Methuselah Tree is an impressive and multi-layered work. The history of this mystical tree reflects much of our own history in a manner that sets it apart from other documentaries that cover similar events. The film's conclusion is equally distinct as it delivers an unexpectedly vivid and harrowing environmental statement.

https://documentaryheaven.com/curse-methuselah-tree/
 

Schama on Rembrandt: Masterpieces of the Last Years (UK) | Click here to watch
(59 min; 2019; English)
Director: Frank Hanly

Icarus-like, Rembrandt flew ever higher towards the sun - the most successful artist in the richest city on earth, 17th century Amsterdam. He lived like a prince and he loved living like a prince. But when his fall came - deep into bankruptcy and scandal, poverty and unfashionability - far from destroying him, it took him to new creative heights and a sense of humanity and the human condition that speaks more directly to us today than Rembrandt in his heyday. Simon Schama celebrates the masterpieces of Rembrandt's last years.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x290mmx
 

The Secret History of Writing, a three-part BBC 4 documentary series presented by Lydia Wilson.
Wilson, an academic and journalist who is also the editor of the Cambridge Literary Review, started off by looking at the moment when writing with pictures transformed into writing with words, a quest that centred on the Rebus, a puzzle or pun in which pictures are used to represent words.

So who did create writing as we know it? As Wilson discovered, this was an entertainingly fraught topic that continues to be debated passionately by Egyptologists and specialists in Mesopotamian culture. The fascinating story that finally unfolded revealed that while some things stay the same (a hieroglyph on an Egyptian sapphire mine turned out to be a series of complaints about weather and working conditions), the smallest moment can change the world.

Series 2: Words on a Page | Click here to watch
(58 min; 2020; English)
Director: David Sington

Presenter Lydia Wilson and calligrapher Brody Neuenschwander set out to explore history’s most important technology - the technology of putting words on a page.

https://www.documentarymania.com/player.php?title=Words+on+a+Page

Fryderyk Chopin (Italy)
A documentary on the life of Frédéric Chopin
(56 min; 2015; Italian with English subtitles)
Director: Angelo Bozzolini

With Bobby McFerrin, Daniel Barenboim, Martha Argerich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Charles Rosen, Alexander Lonquich, Adam Harasiewicz, Janusz Janusz Prusinowski Trio and others... 

The documentary offers a careful use of the epistolary of the “protagonist”, entrusting to letters written and received by Chopin. The writings are interpreted by the two renowned actors Fabrizio Bentivoglio and Margherita Buy. Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was born in Żelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, in a setting far from the limelight of the great musical tradition. His education is the fruit of Polish culture and cannot be separated from that, but he also feels the influence of the three main cultures of the time: Italian, Austro-German and French. This documentary describes the places that provided the basis for the young composer’s imagination, from the capital Warsaw to rural Poland, where Chopin spends part of his childhood and is formed as a man and a musician, on to Paris, theatre of the second half of the musician’s life. 
 

The Extraordinary Voyages of Jules Verne (USA) | Click here to watch
(72 min; 2008; English)
Director: Philip Gardiner

Jules Verne was truly a man ahead of his time. The 19th century Frenchman created some of the great futuristic works in the history of literature, including From the Earth to the Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. The film explores the life and works of "the father of science fiction." From his childhood and his early career as a writer of plays and librettos to his rise to fame, the forces that shaped the life and works of the famed futurist are explored. A compelling portrait of one of the most influential and imitated writers of all time.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22tppe

Pablo Bartholomew, the photographer is the guest for the 255th MTA and will speak on: art critic, photographer, poet, painter, Richard Bartholomew, remembering Richard at 95. 

A visual presentation of Richard's life journey through the eyes of his son, Pablo as he excavated his archive of text and photographs, was discovered and contacted by his father's family in Burma in 2011 and then making a series of trips to Burma to meet and discover his father’s family and one aunt in Scotland.

JDCA is envisioned as a unique art centre that aims to preserve and exhibit its large collection of folk, tribal, traditional and contemporary art, all under one roof. It is currently under construction in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. 

MTA is a permanent programme of JDCA, where invited artists, craft persons or scholars, share their work, experiences, and insights through an illustrated talk. Since 2001, 254 such MTAs have taken place on the second Saturday of every month. Currently, our sessions are being held online.

The MTA will be on Zoom and YouTube at 6 pm, Saturday, 9 April 2022.

Collaboration: JD Centre of Art (JDCA)

Zoom Registration: https://zoom.us/j/83137583807
Meeting ID: 831 375 83807
You can also visit JD Centre of Art’s YouTube channel for live streaming.

Pablo Bartholomew

Pablo Bartholomew is a self-taught photographer. His photojournalism (1983-2004) has been featured in every major international publication, winning him the World Press Photo award thrice.

Since 2000 he has been excavating his five-decade-old photographic archive, evolving exhibitions like Outside In: A Tale of Three Cities (2007); Bombay: Chronicles of a Past Life (2011); and The Calcutta Diaries (2012). He has held over 30 international solo exhibitions. His work is part of prominent collections worldwide.

Since 2005 he has been revisiting his father, Richard Bartholomew’s archive. In 2008, he co-conceived the photo book and exhibition A Critic’s Eye. In 2012, he self-published The Art Critic, a 640-page selection of his father’s writing on modern Indian art.

He has been bestowed with the Padma Shri and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

He is currently continuing his Indian Émigrés series alongside discovering his Burmese roots by expanding on his DNA-based project, incorporating Indian, Bangladeshi, and Burmese weaving traditions.

Richard Lawrence Bartholomew: (1926–1985), 

Art Critic, Photographer, Poet, Painter

Richard Bartholomew escaped from Burma around the time of the Japanese invasion during the Second World War and made New Delhi his home. Here, he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in English Literature, after which he began his career as a full-time art critic writing for various newspapers, journals, and magazines. His creative writing includes poems and short stories published frequently in journals like Thought and Illustrated Weekly of India. As a painter, he held one-person shows in New Delhi and Bombay in the 1950s and 60s. He recorded life around him as a photographer, including his family and artist friends.  A Critic’s Eye, a selection of his photographs, was exhibited at Sepia Gallery, New York, in 2008; at PHOTOINK, New Delhi, in January 2009; at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai, in 2010; at Harrington Street Arts Centre, Kolkata, in 2010; and at Fishbar Gallery, London, in 2011.

1926 Born, November 29, in Tavoy, (Dawei) Burma  

1930 Schooled at St Paul’s, Rangoon (Yangon), Burma

1942 Fled to India during the Japanese occupation of Burma

1948 B.A. (English), St Stephen’s College, New Delhi

1950 M.A. (English), St Stephen’s College, New Delhi

1951–1958 Teacher, Modern School, New Delhi

1953 Married Rati Batra

1955–1960 Art Critic, Thought, New Delhi

1958–1960 Assistant Editor, Thought, New Delhi

1958–1962 Art Critic, Indian Express, New Delhi

1960–1963 Director, Kunika Art Centre, New Delhi

1962 onwards Art Critic, Times of India, New Delhi

1966–1973 Curator of Tibet House, the first museum of Tibetan Art, New Delhi

1970–1971 Senior Fellowship, John D. Rockefeller III Fund, New York

1977–1985 Secretary, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

1982 Commissioner, Contemporary Indian Art, Festival of India, Great Britain

1984 Invited by the Japan Foundation to meet artists in Japan

1985 Died, January 11, in New Delhi

PUBLICATIONS

1971 Husain, Harry N. Abrams, New York (co-author)

1972 The Story of Siddhartha’s Release (poems), Writers Workshop, India

1973 Poems, Writers Workshop, India 

1974 Krishna Reddy (Contemporary Indian Art Series), Lalit Kala Akademi, India

1986 The Cycle (sonnets), Writers Workshop, India

2009 A Critic’s Eye, Chatterjee & Lal, PHOTOINK and Sepia International, India

2012 The Art Critic - BART - An insider’s account of the birth of Modern Indian Art