A Conversation on Agyeya’s biography

Writer, Rebel, Soldier, Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya
(Penguin Random House, India)

The author Akshaya Mukul in conversation with Ashok Vajpeyi

Followed by
A Musical Rendition of Some Poems of Agyeya
By Vidya Shah

(Collaboration: The Raza Foundation)
 

Discussion on the World Health Organisation report

Panelists: Prof. R. Srinivasa Murthy, former Professor and Head, Psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bengaluru and Chief Editor, World Health Report, 2001; Prof. B.N. Gangadhar, former Professor, Head & Director, NIMHANS, Bengaluru, and Board of Governors, NMC; Prof. Pratima Murthy, Professor, Head & Director, NIMHANS, Bengaluru; Prof. Atul Ambekar, Professor of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi and Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence: WHO, Geneva, Strategic Advisory Group, UN; and Dr. Koushik Sinha Deb, Additional Professor, Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Digital Psychiatry, mHealth and eHealth; and Dr. Andrea Bruni, advisor, Mental Health, SERO, WHO, New Delhi

Moderator: Dr. Sudhir Khandelwal, Senior Consultant in Psychiatry, Holy Family Hospital, New Delhi and formerly Head, Dept. of Psychiatry and Chief, National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi

The World Health Report 2022 is an important document on the status of mental health in the world, disability caused by mental illnesses and substance and alcohol abuse, governmental and public response etc. 

Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari/Japan) | Click here to watch

(96 min; 1953; b/w; Japanese with English subtitles)
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

Recipient of Top 10 Film Award for Best Film, Cahiers du Cinéma, 1959; Mainichi Film Concours 1954 awards for Best Art Direction & Best Sound Recording; Pasinetti Award & Silver Lion, Venice Film Festival 1953

Kenji Mizoguchi’s breakthrough film that brought him international attention and an Oscar nomination. The film is a stunning period film set in the war torn 16th century Japan. A tale of ambition, family, love, and war set in the midst of the Japanese Civil Wars - two brothers, one consumed by greed, the other by envy. In a time when the land is savaged by marauding armies, they risk their families and their lives to pursue their obsessions. The heroes are rough-hewn and consumed by ambition, but the film style is elegant and mysterious.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6uaqdr

(75 min; 1987; German/English and with English subtitles)
Directors: Alan Lewens, Alastair Mitchell

A DW Classical Music documentary

Maria Callas, nicknamed 'La Divina', was arguably the most famous soprano of the 20th century. The music documentary Maria Callas: Life and Art looks at the great singer as a person, pays tribute to her vocal artistry and her talent for distinctive portrayal of dramatic roles. 

The biographical film, produced and directed by Alan Lewens and Alastair Mitchell, was released in 1987 – ten years after Callas’ death. In extensive interviews, friends and companions describe how they saw her, and the diva herself even has her say in archive footage. And in between there are rare original excerpts from her breath taking singing performances. In this way, the film creates a portrait of the legendary singer, who was torn between private and artistic ambitions. Maria Callas (1923 - 1977) was frenetically acclaimed and even revered as a goddess by many, while others criticized her harshly for her less-than-perfect singing. This documentary pays tribute to the life and art of the soprano beyond clichés and judgements. 

Series director: Adrian Pennink
Recipient of the International Emmy 2008 for Best Documentary 

A six-part documentary presented by Niall Ferguson. Based on his book The Ascent of Money: The Financial History of the World, the film examines the long history of money, credit, and banking. Throughout the series, Niall Ferguson examines the origins of the pillars of the world’s financial systems, and how behind every great historical phenomenon – empires and republics, wars and revolutions – there lies a financial secret.

Episode 4: Risky Business (48 min)
Niall Ferguson looks at the origins of modern insurance in the early 19th century and to the birth of the welfare state in post-war Japan.

(87 min; 2008; English)
Director: Astra Taylor
Featuring Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor.

In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today's most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas.

Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current beliefs about the environment while sifting through a garbage dump. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District questioning our culture’s fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West—perhaps America’s best-known public intellectual—compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy’s power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it.

(49 min; 2013; English)
Director: Nick Green

Narrated by Paul McGann

The Hanging Garden of Babylon is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world for which no archaeological evidence has ever been found. Centuries of digging have turned up nothing, and many people assume it never existed. But has everyone simply been looking in the wrong place? Oxford academic Stephanie Dalley has decoded an ancient, long-overlooked text in the British Museum and now believes that the gardens were built by another man, in another time, in another location. She travels to war-torn northern Iraq to gather evidence to support her controversial new theory and try to solve this ancient mystery.

Philip Larkin: Love and Death in Hull (UK) | Click here to watch
(60 min; 2003; English)
Directors: James Kent, Nicolas Kent & Ian MacMillan

With Martin Amis, Dave Hill, Philip Larkin (archival footage) 

This one hour single documentary looks at the life and work of Britain’s best loved poet, Philip Larkin. Larkin died in 1985 yet his words endure to this day. Like so many great poets, Larkin did not write for a living but worked a normal job so he was free to write what he wanted, when he wanted. He stopped writing poetry at 55– his poetry is still widely read and broadcast, and a variety of books and memoirs about the man have been published.

Screening to mark Philip Larkin’s Centenary Year 

https://vimeo.com/423992746

The Fear and Allure of Dissent

Speaker: Ashis Nandy

Welcome Remarks: Umakant Lakhera, President, Press Club of India (PCI)

Inauguration of the series: K.N. Shrivastava, Director, IIC

Closing Remarks: Vinay Kumar, Secretary General, PCI

Moderator: Suhas Borker

Venue: Conference Hall, Press Club of India, 1 Raisina Road, New Delhi 110001

First in a new series of Conversations with Media organised in collaboration with Press Club of India. The monthly programmes will be hosted by IIC and PCI alternatively every month