A tribute to well-known filmmaker and media professional, Pramod Mathur.

 13 August at 10 am    Are you with Me? (52 min; 2007; English)
An insight into the HIV & AIDS scenario in the state of Manipur in northeast India. The beginnings of injecting drug use, the subsequent spread of the HIV virus, later times, when awareness was higher but the task to combat drug use, HIV & AIDS and the status of widows was formidable. 

Discussion on Living with HIV
Introduction and Conversation led by Loon Gangte, HIV/AIDS activist

At 12:30     Sannate ka Chhand: Phrase of Silence (42 min; 1989; Hindi)
Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayana 'Ajneya', a great modern Indian littérateur, who was proficient in English, but wrote in Hindi. He died before this film was completed, but an exclusive interview had been recorded. In the video film, Vatsyayan speaks his own biography against the backdrop of places where he has lived, though, created, loved and written.

Discussion on Ajneya’s Contribution to Hindi Literature
Introduction and Conversation led by Om Thanvi, writer, senior journalist, editor and critic, founding Vice-Chancellor, Haridev Joshi University of Journalism and Mass Communication, Jaipur

At 3 pm    Brainstorm: Morphing of the Documentary in the Era of Social Media
Thought sharing by Milin Kapoor, filmmaker, cinematographer, and editor; and Dr. Anandana Kapur, filmmaker and education, founder-Director, Cinemad India; Amudhan R.P., documentary filmmaker and media activist; Iikka Vehkalahti, former Commissioning Editor, Yle Television, Finland

Moderator: Aparna Sanyal, award-winning Director and Producer of nonfiction independent and television documentaries

At 4:45 pm    Krishna – The Divine Lover (28 min; 1985; English)
The charm of a God, more human than godly, donning various roles in different circumstances. Here, he is depicted in his romantic form. This depiction of a much-loved and worshipped God is contextualised with modern attitude towards love.

Discussion on Sensual Reality in Indian Culture
Introduction and Conversation led by Shovana Narayan, well-known Kathak artist and guru

At 5:30 pm    Look at My India (21 min; English)
A trailer segment of an unfinished project. Pramod Mathur had been thinking of people he befriended over 20 years ago in his film-making journey, wondering what happened to them. The aim was to talk with characters from his old films and see where they are between the past and present. Bimla in Koraput, Odisha, is one such character. 

Discussion on Western Hegemony in the Documentary Sector
Introduction and Conversation led by Neelima Mathur

At 7:15 pm    In Conversation: Growing and Living with a Filmmaker
Tanushree Sengupta with Neelima Mathur

A tribute to well-known filmmaker and media professional, Pramod Mathur. The tribute includes a screening of documentaries made by Pramod and Neelima Mathur, conversations and a panel discussion

  Opening Address
Aruna Vasudev, Raghu Rai, Naresh Bedi, Rajiv Mehrotra, Lavlin Thadani, Mahendra Verma,  Indrani Mishra, P.D. Valson, S. Dhanpal, ,Milin Kapoor .

Pre-recorded videos from Monica Lal, Meinolf Fritzen, Michael Camerini, Cheryl Groff,  Ron Hess, Abdul Ashraf Dali, Sang-ki Lee and  Iikka Vehkalahti 

At 7:20 pm    Film: Jungle Dreams (28 min; 1997; English)
Chendru, a Muria tribal in central India, had acted in a Swedish film forty years ago before this film was made.  The present film studies the impact of the Swedish film on this simple tribal boy viz-a-viz his relationship with kinsmen and the changes in his life forty years later. 

Discussion on The Filmmaker and Protagonist Relationship
Introduction and Conversation led by Pankaj Johar, documentary filmmaker

Curated by Rajiv Mehrotra

Tibet in Song (USA) | (86 min; 2009; Tibetan & English)

Director: Ngawang Choephel

Recipient of the International Human Rights Award, Cinema for Peace Awards 2010; and Special Jury Prize – World Cinema Documentary, Sundance Film Festival 2009

Screening will be followed by a discussion with the director

The film is both a celebration of traditional Tibetan folk music and a harrowing journey into the past fifty years of cultural repression inside Chinese-controlled Tibet. The Director, a former Tibetan political prisoner, Ngawang Choephel, weaves a story of beauty, pain, brutality and resilience, introducing Tibet to the world in a way never before seen on film, Depicting an array of traditional folk songs sung by native Tibetans, the film eloquently tells the tale of cultural exploitation and resistance in Tibet

(Collaboration: Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama)

URBAN HETEROTOPIAS

The festival presents films that looks closely at artful and critical engagements in video and moving images by Indian contemporary artists. Organised in collaboration with Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists (VAICA), the festival is curated by Bharati Kapadia, Chandita Mukherjee and Anuj Daga, the festival is focuses on three themes – The Cartographies of Sensation; Peripheries of the Real; and Urban Heterotopias

Gigi Scaria Amusement Park 05.24
Notions of identity, industrialisation, lifestyle, crime, spirituality and almost anything that society has asserted, are constantly produced and consumed by the city, since the earliest urban formations. 

Abeer Khan Makaan 04.24
In this work by Abeer Khan we are shown Mumbai's government housing for the evicted residents of slums. Filming entirely from the exterior, Abeer communicates the despondency of the residents during the lockdown. 

Amol Patil Rest 02.31
Amol Patil misses the lively streets of Mumbai in his childhood, where activists staged plays and students studied under street lamps. 

Babu Eashwar Prasad On the Road 05.12
Babu Eshwar Prasad revisits footage recorded from moving vehicles, to give us a meditation on roadways. 

Amshu Chukki Dinner Party 07.38
The scene of an abandoned dinner party, overlaid with mud, overgrown with weeds, a comfortable domestic set-up reclaimed by nature. Amshu Chukki moves his camera in a long fluid take with the gaze of a detective or archaeologist, looking closely at every surface, going into the nooks and corners. 

Katyayini Gargi The Centre does not Hold (Patterns emerge) 04.10
“Why does one chase after a sense of stability?” asks Katyayani Gargi. The title is an allusion to a poem by WB Yeats: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world ...” 

Sukanya Ghosh A Chair walks into a Landscape 05.34
Sukanya Ghosh continues her ongoing engagement with photographs from her family archive in this video. She looks at the nature of leisure and holiday photographs, saying “I construct lines of sight in fictive landscapes which are inhabited by ghostly apparitions of people long gone.” 

Moonis Ahmad Accidentally Miraculous Lives 07.12
Moonis Ahmad stitches together images with the technique of photogrammetry. The stitching is possible at some points and fractured at others, acting as an allegory of the impossible stitch, behind which the stories, histories and regional figures become inaccessible. 

Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee Far from Home 02.03
Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee builds vivid imaginary worlds. Far from Home takes us to an observation deck, looking out on what looks like an amusement park at night. Later, by daylight, this seems to be a system of production, not entertainment. 

Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee Homecoming 02.03
Homecoming takes us to a dystopic future. The setting is a corner of an urban settlement. The action is played out on several visual planes. 

Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee Survival Engine 01.30
Sabyasachi Bhattacharjee takes us to a relatively close view of the dystopian world seen in Far from Home. This gives us an insight into a system that treats citizens as fodder for its greed. Sabyasachi’s process involves manipulating original and sourced images, to form new wholes from different parts, which then turn up in entirely new contexts. 

Sheba Chhachhi Moving the City 05.58
Sheba Chhachhi is interested in the increased fluidity between private and public space in contemporary cityscapes that allows for new explorations and possible subjectivities. Here she stages a performance by a young woman, a series of movements, drawing on dance and yoga, on the Delhi streets. 

Karthik K G Seismic Vibrato 04.54
Karthik KG contemplates the aesthetics of digital modulations. He makes enquiries through the use of algorithmic culture, new modes of knowledge production and the shaping of digital subjectivities in contemporary society. 

Suresh B V Canes of Wrath 03.17
Suresh B V says that canes are everywhere. Always in the front-lines when cities turn into battlegrounds, canes instill fear, to ensure silence. 

Swagata Bhattacharyya Road Scene 03.19
Swagata Bhattacharyya represents the road as a site of performance in this video. He navigates the viewer through a road that is transformed into a fortified site of conflict. 

Tushar Waghela The Ghost Taxonomy 04.57
In The Ghost Taxonomy, Tushar Waghela alludes to the complex matrix of inequity in Indian society and how we have accepted it as a natural consequence of growth. This is woven into our social fabric and income disparity is institutionalised. 

Ushnish Mukhopadhyay Where was I Last Night? 04.03
Ushnish Mukhopadhyay engages with particular spaces and events. Here the protagonist comes to consciousness in an unfamiliar room and tries to take stock of his situation. The alarming feeling caused by a temporary loss of awareness, of no memory of events that may have led to the present situation, of being overwhelmed by the fear that some irretrievable damage may have been done, are explored here.

For more details of the screenings, kindly please visit www.vaica.org/catalogue
 

PERIPHERIES OF THE REAL

The festival presents films that looks closely at artful and critical engagements in video and moving images by Indian contemporary artists. Organised in collaboration with Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists (VAICA), the festival is curated by Bharati Kapadia, Chandita Mukherjee and Anuj Daga, the festival is focuses on three themes – The Cartographies of Sensation; Peripheries of the Real; and Urban Heterotopias

Aditi Kulkarni & Payal Arya Memory is Always in the Periphery 09.24
Aditi Kulkarni and Payal Arya look at personal isolation, infused with new meaning during the pandemic. Using 3D scanning technologies, they treat spaces and memories so as to create insightful perceptions. 

Abeer Khan Child-lock 02.12
Produced during the lockdown period, this video plays with the notion of freedom of mind. The afternoons of the lockdown reminded Abeer of her childhood summers, of daydreaming during humid afternoons on fantasy scenarios and projecting these onto the walls.

Maya Krishna Rao It's Easier Now 02.45
Theatre artist Maya Krishna Rao explores lockdown and confinement with designer Mansi Thapliyal. 

Saba Hasan Death will Come like a Shadow 02.11
Saba Hasan responds to the social isolation caused by the pandemic by turning the camera on her own self. A solitary experience of the passage of time, created with painterly textures and overlapping images, sounds and plays of light, and the artist’s voice, reciting her own poem.

Hetal Chudasama Deepest Demarcation 09.52
A performance by Hetal Chudasama reflecting on the death, loss and trauma following the lockdown. 

C Chaithanya The Final Flutter 01.35
Through hand gestures and reflected images, Chaithanya draws a parallel between a butterfly’s existence and that of medical professionals like herself during the pandemic, seeing the emotions and helplessness inside a Covid ward.

Archana Hande Indefinite 05.29
Archana Hande says her video diary is about many layers, “an indefinite diary of time, anxiety and uncertainty of space.” Revisiting recent memories, she feels as though we are closing a period of enforced rest. Now there is an urgency to live in the present and to practice again. 

Kunatharaju Mrudula Try.... Try.... Try.... 02.30
Women’s hands wave and knock urgently on the glass panels separating us from the subjects in this video. The repeated signalling of the hands fills us with dread, and reminded of the threat of domestic or societal violence that women live with constantly.

Khandakar Ohida The Last Dream I Saw 03.35
Khandakar Ohida’s work is marked by her concern for women, especially women who cannot easily communicate their thoughts.

Khandakar Ohida I was Still Silent 03.22
Poised on the fine line between the spoken and the unspoken, the work depicts the invisible labour of the household juxtaposed with the burden of familial duties and concerns. 

Kunatharaju Mrudula Stain 03.05
The white space of a fresh bedsheet forms a staging space for this video. It starts with a play of tangible tension behind the stage, with shifting, gripping unseen forms crushing a pomegranate. 

Bharati Kapadia For Sahba 05.14
Sometimes catching up with an old friend can be about discovering more than you could have imagined. Bharati Kapadia’s phone call to her friend Sahba brings to us the story of an enduring friendship between two women that is reaffirmed even as they speak.

Manmeet Devgun And we Became One 02:07
This work talks about relationships and experiences of love and betrayal. 

Shreya Menon Rabbit Hole 01.41
This work by Shreya Menon is an attempt to represent how power dynamics pressurise people and compel them to adopt ways of living that may be alien to them. 

Ranbir Kaleka House of Opaque Water 10.36
The islands of the Sundarbans are coming under ever-rising sea levels. Ranbir Kaleka travels with a farmer Sheikh Lal Mohan, to a spot in the sea, under which his submerged village lies. 

Devadeep Gupta Normalisation of a Disaster 09.05
Devadeep Gupta observes the impact of a massive industrial disaster, the Baghjan oil and natural gas blowout of 2020. In this stark video, apart from local residents and frontline workers, we see the disaster tourists. 

Pranay Datta Moments Before the Fall 06.33
Pranay Datta simulates ecological conditions and explores a natural phenomenon through the lens and the brain of a machine in this work. 
 

THE CARTOGRAPHIES OF SENSATION

The festival presents films that looks closely at artful and critical engagements in video and moving images by Indian contemporary artists. Organised in collaboration with Video Art by Indian Contemporary Artists (VAICA), the festival is curated by Bharati Kapadia, Chandita Mukherjee and Anuj Daga; Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum; and Comet Media Foundation, the festival is focuses on three themes – The Cartographies of Sensation; Peripheries of the Real; and Urban Heterotopias

Ayisha Abraham I saw a God dance 06.48
“The celebrated dancer Ram Gopal first came to me as an apparition from strips of 8 mm film that I found in a plastic bag outside an old house” says Ayisha Abraham of her work

Bharati Kapadia Playing with Danger 02.12
Danger has many faces, says Bharati Kapadia in this brief video. 

Sumakshi Singh Mapping the Memory Mandala 06.52
In Sumakshi Singh’s installations, environments are transformed into illusions, through time-lapse animations. Her works explore the bases of how we assign attention, construct meaning and perceive our realities within and without. 

Gigi Scaria Prisms of Perception 04.20
Gigi Scaria asserts that while claiming to live in contemporary times, we actually live deep inside in our own subjective worlds, seeing social ‘change’ only from our limited angles of view. 

Tallur L N Interference 04.00 
Tallur L N captures the dusting of an old carpet by hand in slow-motion. The work alludes to the sediment of time and the release of dust embedded under the surface of our dominant narratives, gives room for thought.

Sukanya Ghosh Isosceles Forest 03.00
Sukanya Ghosh creates an optical collage in this work. She says that “the overlapping and intermingling of images fading in and out of each other, seem to look for new propositions, following segmented routes as if seeking out the best possible path to freedom.”

Sohrab Hura The Lost Head & The Bird 10.12
Sohrab Hura takes us to a disorienting and absurd world, where the boundaries between fact and fiction are blurred. in this frightening fast-changing, post-truth world, actions are fuelled by appeals to emotions and facts are increasingly ignored.

Manjot Kaur Constant motion 07.40
This work of Manjot Kaur is conceived as an intervention between the microbial, biological, ecological and banal aspects of motion. Time and growth are the central ideas here.

Ashok Meena Opium 05.08
Set in a temple town, when large numbers of pilgrims have come to celebrate a festival, Ashok Meena takes us through the play of a riveting range of emotions.

Sanskriti Chattopadhyay Becoming Invisible 11.54
Sanskriti Chattopadhyay draws attention to the issue of the virtual footprints that we all leave behind on the internet. 

Vishal Kumaraswamy Swaayattate (Autonomy) 16.13
Vishal Kumaraswamy investigates the complex entanglements of the organic and synthetic worlds in this work drawing from critical reflections on surveillance and racist capitalism, and ethical concerns related to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence.

Bharathi

Celebrating Mahakavi Subramaniya Bharathiyar, legendary poet 

Lecture-demonstration followed by a Bharatanatyam group recital
Choreographed by Guru Dr. Saroja Vaidyanathan

From 17:30 to 18:15
Lecture-Demonstration

By Dr. Rajkumar Bharathi, eminent musician and great grandson on Mahavi Subramaniya Bharathi

At 18:30
Bharatanatyam Recital

Group performance by artists of Ganesa Natyalaya, disciples of Guru Smt. Saroja Vaidyanathan

Artists: Gayatri Deka; Sudhana Sankar; Mrinal Sharma; Akansha Rana; Mridula Nambiar; Debasmita Thakur; Priyanka Rawat; Srishti Mohan; Pooja Pithambharan; Varsha Chand; and Aishwarya Attri

(Collaboration: Ganesa Natyalaya)
 

A concert of old film songs by the well-known lyricist and poet, Sahir Ludhianvi

Artists: Bhupinder Bhupi; Dolly Narang; Anupama Malhotra; Fanish Pawar; Parminder Chadha; Anushruti Pawar; Alok Sahdev; and others

Compere and sutradhar: Seema Verma

(Collaboration: Sakha Cultural Society)
 

Hindustani Vocal Recital

By Mandar Gadgil from Pune, disciple of Pt. Vijay Koparkar
Accompanists: Kshitij (harmonium); and Saptak Sharma (tabla)

At 19:00
Bharatanatyam Recital  

By Samrat Dutta from Kolkata, disciple of Prof C.V. Chandrasekhar

Accompanists: Mohana Iyer on Nattuvangam; Anand R. Jayaraman on Violin; Brinda Radhakrishnan on Vocal; Shankar Narayanaswamy on Mridangam; Rupak Mukherjee on Flute; Debopam Das with Narration

Premiere performance by Ruchika Theatre Company
Directed and designed by Feisal Alkazi

Cast: Gayatri, Gunjan, Manvi, Arnav, Deepak, Dhruv, Raghav, Ritvik, Shashank and Vatsal

The migrant, either running away from disaster or war, whether from Syria or Ukraine or from Covid in our own country, is the most eloquent image of our century. In China from 1980 to 2015 the one child policy created a unique new breed of migrants, the ‘family planning refugees.’ Based on a novel by Ma Jian, the play explores the story of a young couple Meili and Kongzi as they travel down the Yangtze to try and escape.