PHYSICAL PROGRAMME

FILMS ON ARTISTS – DANCE ENGAGEMENTS

Two films on dance by Sandhya Kumar
The films will be introduced by Justin McCarthy, well-known Bharatanatyam dancer and Guru

The filmmaker Sandhya Kumar and  dancer-musician Justin McCarthy will initiate a discussion after the screenings

Light Falling on White Flowers (India)
(14 min; 2009; English)

Many years ago, a young girl was born with one dream – to trace back the sacred root of dance and restore it to the highest place in the arts. Isadora Duncan came to invent the ‘Modern Dance’. Where dwells this poetic spirit today.

O Friend, This Waiting! (India)
(32 min; 2012; Telugu & English with subtitles)

Could a song be full of love, and yet banal and trifling? Such were the padams of Kshetrayya. A wandering poet-musicians, Kshetrayya wrote for devadasis, the dancing courtesans at the courts of the 17th century Nayaka kings. His padams became the most cherished of her songs of love. O Friend, This Waiting! Reflects on the entwined fortunes of the padams and the women they were written for, from the 17th to the 20th century, while dwelling in the performance spaces of temples and courts of the Nayaka period.

Screening will be followed by a discussion with Justin McCarthy and Sandhya Kumar 
 

PHYSICAL PROGRAMME

A covert mission of illustrations on Delhi
By Ankur Ahuja 

Preview on Tuesday, 19 April 2022 at 18:30

Delhi is not exactly a flanêur’s delight. Between the renegade cows, stray dogs and rambunctious truck drivers it can be quite difficult to marvel at the sights and sounds that Delhi offers. Romantic meandering is often reduced to dodging the Tetris like traffic. It’s way easier to hate Delhi than like it, let alone be devoted to it. The rudeness, the lack of grace, the wanton abuses flinging at you from unexpected quarters, administrative apathy, lack of empathy… the list can go on. Yet, if you start paying attention to the particulars, the minutiae of daily life, you discover a wealth of cultural representations, casually holding their own against the monochromatic uniformity that disguises as urbanization.

This exhibition is an investigation of the city, represented by its unremarkable common inhabitant in a daily transaction with the city’s seasons and moods in its public spaces. It is also a comment on the unique form of isolation that only crowded cities radiate, where strangers communicate in wordless glances- awkward, flirtatious, suspicious, threatening- while the drama of daily life plays out around us. 

Ankur Ahuja

Delhi based cinematographer, Ankur Ahuja is a self-taught artist. A visual documentarian at heart, her current work is informed by her troubled and tense relationship with Delhi and her identity as a second-generation Partition Punjabi. She has been published as a writer and artist in the Graphic Anthology ‘Neither Here Nor There: Restorying Partition’. She also helped establish the Delhi Comic Arts Festival as the Manager of the festival that brings together artists working with graphic novelists around the world together under one roof for exhibitions, talks, and interactions.

She has been part of several group shows. This is her second solo exhibition.

PHYSICAL PROGRAMME

Tales of an Explorer – Five Decades of Adventure Travel, Expeditions and Environmental Concerns Across 7 Continents
Illustrated lecture by Shri Mandip Singh Soin

Chair: Amb. Manjeev Singh Puri, former Indian Ambassador to Nepal and Distinguished Fellow, Earth Science and Climate Change, The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) 

Mandip Singh Soin, well-known explorer, mountaineer, environmentalist and adventure travel professional will reflect back on five decades of adventure, expeditions and eco concerns across 7 continents.  His journeys range from climbs and treks in the Himalayas to the Arctic, camels across the Thar to mapping ecotourism in the Andamans, from Madagascar, Peru, Costa Rica, Antarctica and beyond. 
 

Satyajit Ray and the music he lived by

Illustrated lecture by Biswajit Mitra, senior IT professional living and working in Munich, Germany

Chair: Dr. Partho Datta, Professor, School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University 

The talk will explore Ray’s world of music, the music he grew up with. The music he loved, lived and the music he consumed, digested and internalised to create an uniquely distinctive brand of background score for his own films and for a handful of films by a few others.

This lecture is part of the ongoing series of programmes to celebrate the centenary year of Satyajit Ray, legendary filmmaker, writer, illustrator and music composer

Japan’s Surrender in 1945 and the Remaking of Asia

Speaker: Prof. Hans van de Ven, Professor of Modern Chinese History, Cambridge University

Chair: Prof. Sreemati Chakrabarti, Chairperson and Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies

Moderator: Prof. Madhavi Thampi, Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies

Japan accepted the allied demand for unconditional surrender on 15 August 1945. Rather than focusing on just Japan and the USA or seeing Japan’s surrender as the definite end of the Second World War, Prof. Hans van de Ven examines the complex politics of surrender as various parties in China, Indonesia, and India negotiated this crucial event.  He will argue that while the surrenders signified the definite end of European imperialism, it also saw the beginning of struggles for dominance of forces in each country that had grown strong and had begun to compete with each other during the Second World War in each of these three countries

(Collaboration: Institute of Chinese Studies)

Invitation Link: 
https://icsin.org/newsletter/show/vp-dutt-memorial-lecture-japans-surrender-in-1945-and-the-remaking-of-asia-20th-april-500-pm-ist-zoom-webinar 

Registration link

 

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/