This Life at Play: Memoirs

By Girish Karnad; translated by Girish Karnad and Srinath Perur (Fourth Estate: 19 May 2021)

Discussants: Ms Nasreen Munni Kabir, television producer, director and author based in UK; Ms Arundhati Ghosh, Executive Director, India Foundation for the Arts; and Dr. Srinath Perur, writer, author and co-translator of the book

Chair: Shri Suryasarathi Bhattacharya

Girish Karnad was one of modern India’s greatest cultural figures: an accomplished actor, a path-breaking director, an innovative administrator, a clear-headed and erudite thinker, a public intellectual with an unwavering moral compass, and above all, the most extraordinarily gifted playwright of his times. Moving and humorous, This Life at Play translated from the Kannada in part by Karnad himself and in part by Srinath Perur, is insightful and candid, the memoirs provide an unforgettable glimpse into the life-shaping experiences of a towering genius, and a unique window into the India in which he lived and worked.  

Prof. Deborah Swallow, Director, Courtauld Institute of Art, London will speak on

Art for All: Samuel Courtauld, collecting and public patronage

The concept of 'Art for All' is universally endorsed, but what does it really mean?
Industrialist Samuel Courtauld ensured that the great impressionist and post-impressionist paintings that he purchased, and so loved, were primarily in the collections of public institutions. He passionately believed in the positive impact of great art. Yet the concept of 'Art for All' in the 1920s is different from that in the 2020s. Today arts and cultural institutions, are rightly being challenged about what they do, what they hold, whose work they show and whom they are for. This talk will look at the history of The Courtauld from this perspective and its hopes for the future.  Prof. Deborah Swallow is the Märit Rausing Director of The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.  Founded in 1932, The Courtauld is the UK’s leading specialist institution for research and study in the history of art, architecture, and conservation, with an art gallery and a world-renowned art collection. Before joining the Institute, Prof. Swallow worked for 21-years in the Indian and Asian Departments at the Victoria and Albert Museum and 8 years in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

(Collaboration: JD Centre of Art)

Poetry in Corona Times

A discussion with Anamika; Prof. K. Satchidanandan; Priya S. Chabria; and Sudeep Sen

Moderator: Ashok Vajpeyi, Managing Trustee, The Raza Foundation

(Collaboration: The Raza Foundation)

Dusk to Dawn: Poetic Voices on the Current Times South Asia and Beyond
Edited by Chandra Mohan, Rita Malhotra and Anamika (Heritage Publishers, New Delhi: 2021)

Discussants: Shri Ashok Vajpeyi, eminent poet and critic; Prof. Sanjukta Dasgupta, academic, poet, Convenor, English Advisory Board, Sahitya Akademi and President, Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, ICCR, Kolkata; Dr. Chandra Mohan, Chair, ICLA Standing Research Committee South Asian Literature and Culture and one of the Editors of the book

Moderator: Prof. Malashri Lal, academic, writer and Editor

Chair: Shri N.N. Vohra, President, IIC 

Witness for the Prosecution (USA) | ( Click here to watch )
(116 min; 1957; b/w; English)
Director: Billy Wilder

With Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton

Multiple award winner including David for Best Foreign Actor, David di Donatello Awards 1958; Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, Golden Globes, USA 1958; Golden Train Award for Best Actress, Faro Island Film Festival 1957; among others

Ailing barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts is thrust back into the courtroom in what becomes one of the most unusual and eventful murder case of the lawyer's career when he finds himself defending Leonard Vole, a man being tried for the murder of a wealthy woman. With Robarts choosing to represent him, the two find themselves up against Leonard's cold-hearted wife, Christine - who, in a surprising turn of events, chooses to appear in court against her husband.

A three-part BBC series. Historian Bettany Hughes travels to India, Greece and China on the trail of three giants of ancient philosophy - Buddha, Socrates and Confucius. All three philosophers lived between the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, during a period of unprecedented and intense intellectual development.

Trailblazers whose radical ideas signalled a key change in human consciousness, each embodied the shift from a reliance on the supernatural, as the sole way to explain humankind’s place in the cosmos, to one where rational argument and logical reasoning offered new, exciting possibilities.

Drawing on archaeology and expert opinion, Bettany Hughes follows in the footsteps of these great figures, in her quest to unpack their philosophy in the context of their age. She reveals how, even though their ideas came about two and a half thousand years ago, their thinking still shapes, and continues to provide solutions to, our own lives.

Genius of the Ancient World: Episode 3 – Confucius | ( Click here to watch )
(59:01 min; 2015; English)
In the third and final episode, Bettany Hughes investigates the game-changing ideas of Confucius. Confucius is considered the first Chinese thinker to take a systematic, philosophical approach to the social, political and moral challenges of his world.

Born in a chaotic, violent age, he believed that harmony could be restored through the example of the sage rulers of history. A great innovator, he commandeered rituals and traditions of the past, to form a compelling philosophical vision. A pioneer in education, he attracted a loyal band of students, and tried to instil his principles of moral excellence and self-cultivation in China's rulers. 

Is Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia Nazi propaganda – or the greatest film about sport ever made? The two-part documentary has been acclaimed as a masterpiece that revolutionised the way sport was depicted on screen.  This epic record of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games attempts to combine sporting reportage with a celebration of physical beauty and the spectacle involved in this uniquely unifying event. And what cinema historians still debate today is whether Riefenstahl was defying Goebbels and Hitler all those summers ago, or whether she was doing exactly what they wanted. 

The two-part documentary will be screened over the next two weeks.

Olympia Part One:

Festival of Nations (Olympia 1. Teil – Fest der Völker) | ( Click here to watch )
(111 min; 1938; b/w; German with English subtitles)
Director: Leni Riefenstahl

Recipient of the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Kinema Junpo Awards 1941. Part One begins with a history of the Olympic games – with a mystical glide through the smoke-wreathed ruins and statues of ancient Greece depicting the traditions of the ancient games in the city of Olympia. The film floats through time and space until it reaches the lighting of the Olympic cauldron in Berlin – the torch relay was invented for the 1936 Games and continuing with a portrayal of many of the field events at the 1936 Berlin games.

(81 min; 2008; English)
Directors: Alan Dater, Lisa Merton

Taking Root tells the dramatic story of Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights and defend democracy – a movement for which this charismatic woman became an iconic inspiration.