The Fascinating Universe of the Bandish: Saas-Bahu and Beyond
Illustrated presentation by Malini Nair

Chair: Ms Vidya Shah

The bandish is at once critical as well as irrelevant to the khayal. It provides the framework around which the raga unfurls with limitless possibilities. But the poetry is often simplistic, spinning around the themes of domesticity and romance, the concerns stuck in time and place. A look at how gharanas and musicians have dealt with this poetry, some conventional, a few off-beat and how popular culture treats bandishes.

Malini is a senior editor and a feature writer with special interest in how India's classical traditions and how these have evolved over time, and is constantly taking cues from society and politics. She works as a consulting editor with gender platform behanbox.com and is a columnist at Scroll
 

Battles of Telecom
By A.K. Bhargava (Rumour Books India; 2022)

Chair: Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Former Union Cabinet Minister, Ministry of Law and Justice; Ministry of Communications; and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology 

Moderator: Shri Rajat Mukherjee, Director General, Broadband India Forum

Discussants: Shri T.K. Arun, Senior journalist; Shri Prashant Singhal, Global TMT emerging market leader E & Y; Justice Shri Navin Chawla, Judge, Delhi High Court; Justice Shri Shiva Kirti Singh, former Judge, Supreme Court of India’ and Shri A.K. Bhargava, former Member TDSAT and Telecom Commissioner and author of the book

West Asia at War: Repression, Resistance and Great Power Games
By Talmiz Ahmad (HarperCollins India: 2022)

Moderator: Amb. K P Fabian, Distinguished Fellow, Symbiosis University 

Speakers : Sh. Atul Aneja, Editor, India Narrative.com ; Dr. Meena Singh Roy, Head, Eurasia & West Asia Centre, Tillotoma  Foundation ; Amb. Talmiz Ahmad, Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies, Symbiosis, Pune & Author of the Book

 

 

Play by Badal Sircar
Directed by Tarique Hameed

Presented by Wings Cultural Society

With Prince, Virika Solanki, Tarique Hameed, Rajguru Mohan, Danish Khan, Anupam Sharma, Sakshum Kapoor, Riya Banerjee, Sumit Kapoor, Moulshree, Sachin Agrawal, Harkirat Kaur, Vajid Ali, and Puja Bansal

Spartacus was the leader of the great slave revolt that began in 71 BC and shook the mighty Roman Empire. The play revolves around five actions – capturing of the people, selling of these captives in the market, slaves toiling, gladiator-slaves fighting in the arena, and the crucifixion of the slaves for acts of rebellion. Badal Sircar, the well-known playwright adapted this play from his favourite novel of the same title by Howard Fast. Wanting to dramatize the story, it is the first play by Sircar where he has used the human body to develop the action in the play. 

A World of Games in a Universe at Play: Exploring the Ludic Legacy of South Asia

Speaker: Dr Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, Acting Director, Centre for the Study of Indian Science (CSIS), University of Copenhagen

Chair: Professor Kenneth G. Zysk, Professor Emeritus, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

Jacob Schmidt-Madsen has studied the history of traditional South Asian games, with special emphasis on the interactions between games, ritual, and divination. He has written extensively on the games of chaupar (ludo) and gyan chaupar (snakes and ladders).

The history of games in South Asia goes back to the Indus Valley Civilization in the 3rd millennium BCE. This talk invites you on a tour of that history, stopping at classic games such as chess, chaupar, and backgammon.

Organised by IIC-International Research Division with the support of Ministry of External Affairs

Rearranging Sandstone: The Temples of the Chalukyas of Vatapi

Illustrated lecture by Dr. Srikumar Menon, Associate Professor, National Institute of Advanced Study, Bengaluru. Dr. Menon is an architect specializing in ancient and early architecture of the Indian subcontinent

Introduction: Dr. Himanshu Prabha Ray

Chair: Dr. Shashank S. Sinha

The monuments of the Early Chalukyas in Badami, Karnataka are some of the earliest examples of temple architecture in stone in southern India. Despite the early date of some these monuments, the artisans who conceived and erected them seem to have been ahead of the times as far as ingenuity and boldness of conception go. Badami is replete with monuments large and small which respond sensitively to the dramatic nature of the physical landscape of golden sandstone cliffs and deep gorges. The talk illustrates the results of suggested reconstruction of the monuments as originally envisaged by its builder 

(150 min; 1980; Russian with English subtitles)
Director: Vladimir Menshov

Recipient of the Oscar Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Academy Awards, USA 1981; Gold Award for Best Theatrical Feature, WorldFest Houston, 1981; and Best Soviet Movie, MTV Movie Awards, Russia 1981

Living together in a workers' dormitory, Katerina and her friends are determined to make it in Moscow. But when a boorish cameraman forces himself on her, Katerina finds herself pregnant and alone as her friends move on. Twenty years later, she's fought to become a factory director, outpacing her old roommates career-wise, but still alone but for her daughter. When she meets a genial mechanic, love seems possible again…

Looking for Charlie: Life and Death in the Silent Era (UK) | Click to watch here
(77 min; 2018; English)
Directors: Darren R. Reid, Brett Sanders

A feature length documentary that explores the forgotten lives of a pair of suicidal clowns who inspired Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Behind the stars of vaudeville are inspirational figures whose names have been lost to history. The film is an unflinching look at the role played by depression in helping shape the medium of cinema.

https://vimeo.com/570320293

(69 min; 2020; English)
Director: Michael Oswald

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a documentary by Michael Oswald about Colin Wallace a former Military Intelligence Officer involved in psychological operations in Northern Ireland. Colin Wallace spread fake news, created a witchcraft scare, smeared politicians and attempted to divide and create conflict amongst communities, organisations and individuals. He fell out with members of the intelligence community and found himself accused of murder.

An eight-part BBC series in which British art historian Dr Gus Casely-Hayford explores the pre-colonial history of some of Africa's most important kingdoms.

Episode 5: The Kingdom of Assante (60 min) | Click here to watch
Director: Mark Bates

In this episode, Dr Casely-Hayford travels to Ghana in West Africa, where a powerful kingdom once dominated the region. Asante was built on gold and slaves, which ensured its important place in an economy that linked three continents. He reveals how this sophisticated kingdom emerged from the unlikely environment of dense tropical forest and how it was held together by a shared sense of tradition and history - one deliberately moulded by the kingdom's rulers.

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