Tag: documentary

April 3, 2021 /

The documentary flows at walking speed. The grandness comes across in the sound of water and the people will take a viewer more than a few minutes to get accustomed to. Luckily, the music, the voices of the people and the cinematography help. Overall, this documentary is an example of a new kind of love (or devotion) that a new generation of people feels towards their planet. Let’s hope that the world listens.

August 30, 2020 /

The Whole Family’ is a photo project that portrays the emotional longing of the family members of the missing. It is an artistic intervention in support of them as they continually ask the authorities about the whereabouts of the enforced disappeared people during the 10 years long People’s War in Nepal.
It is a reenactment to create a complete family photo that portrays the vacuum created by the loss of the family member. This photo project focuses on the emotional loss and shows the current socio-economic situation of the remaining family members.

September 1, 2018 /

An important historical record of a traumatic period in India’s recent political history, PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE by Anand Patwardhan focuses on the State of Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi from June 1975 to March 1977. During the Emergency the media was muzzled, over 100,000 people were arrested without charge and imprisoned without trial. But political prisoners existed before the Emergency, and they continue to exist even after it is over.

May 30, 2018 /

Documentary film has had a long and interesting career in India. It was mobilised, until Independence, as a vehicle for Imperial propaganda, and put in the service of the nation-building project in free India. To be sure, much of Films Division (FD) sponsored documentary work also did not rise much above the status of propaganda, but its ideals were self-avowedly loftier – to educate the ‘masses’ beholden to tradition, to create modern and scientific-minded citizens, national integration, etc. Work of several filmmakers, like S. Sukhdev and SNS Sastry, supported by FD in the 60s and 70s did betray an independent streak, evidenced by their efforts to tackle difficult subjects coupled with bold formal experiments, but their critical perspective seems to have dissipated by the time of the Emergency.

October 4, 2017 /

Gauri Lankesh was one of the Karnataka’s most prominent and fearless journalist. She was shot dead outside her house in Bengaluru on the night of 5th September, 2017. Gauri spoke out against communal forces in the Country and represented dissent and freedom of speech. The film is more than a personal tribute and follows her political journey, envisaging what she stood for and her struggle for communal harmony until her last breath. And her life story has become the history of Karnataka’s fight against right-wing communal forces.

June 15, 2017 /

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s act of denying exemption of censor for three films selected for the 10th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala has invited strong reactions from various corners. The festival, one of its kind in the country, is an avenue for documentary filmmakers to get a wide audience for their films. It is particularly an important platform for independent filmmakers. What is common to these three films—In the Shade of Fallen Chinar, Directed by Fazil N.C. and Shawn Sebastian; The Unbearable Being of Lightness, directed by P.N. Ramachandra; and March March March, directed by Kathu Lukose—is that they deal with issues related to contemporary politics.

August 6, 2016 /

Beyond the FACEBOOK shared nostalgic mist covered view of Shillong lies the reality of very Shillong kind of deprivation – unspoken and silent. Students of Christ Church’s Morning School, Mawlai Syllaikariah decide to hear the truth. This is a story burom-class of Shillong do not want to be told.

July 18, 2016 /

Jashn-e-Azadi , was one of the first documentaries to engage with the uprising for freedom in Kashmir. Released in 2007, the film has had a chequered screening career. Available for sometime in low resolution versions on Vimeo and Youtube and torrents, we thought it was appropriate that a properly encoded streaming version was available for viewing and we asked Sanjay Kak for the permission. He not only permitted us to encode and upload but also wrote a short note about the film.

July 11, 2016 /

Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda kadei ka film ba paw Nam ba la shna da U Sriprakash. Kane ka phlim ha ka sein ba nyngkong eh ka pynpaw paidbah ia ki jingshisha halor ka jingtih uranium ha jadugoda da ka UCIL ka ba dei ka company ba kwah ban rih uranium ha jylla jong ngi ruh. Ka headquarter jong ka UCIL ka don ha Jadugoda, Kat ta ruh pat ka shim da lah ban khmih ba yn ym don jingktah ia ka koit ka khiah Na ka radiation ba mih Na ka jingtih Uranium ha Jadugoda.

March 4, 2016 /

To be brave you have to risk something. To be meaty, brilliant, and thorny you have to provide insights that don’t just voice what most of the people in the room would like to say, but that takes them to a different level of understanding or provokes them to investigate further. With great respect for Chris Rock’s career, I don’t think Oscar night he achieved either.

November 5, 2015 /

It is fair to say that in any writing of the history of western music in India, Shillong would deserve a chapter. It is just that the writing of this chapter has become way too problematic – too many loose ends, too many grand unifying theories. The culture of western popular music in Shillong has no shortage of hagiographers. In fact most of the writing on this field has been gushy, uncritical and downright fallacious (there have been so many that it would be worthwhile to bring out a compendium of these).