|
Jammin' the Blues
(Approx Duration: 40 minutes)
Jammin'
the Blues is a personalized kind of memoir of some of the things that
used to happen to this particular writer, our central character, when he
was young and confused. In comparison to his stable sort of professional
and personal universe today, events used to have a particular zing to it.
Comic,
poignant, wistful and occasionally black, Jammin' the Blues, is a dense
collection of events and incidents, which have a certain naïve and
precocious charm about them.
Footwear fetish
Duration: 5 mins
A
character is terminally amused by all kinds of footwear he sees people
wearing. He maintains he can dissect personalities by looking at the
person's footwear.
This
leads him to many adventures of the obsessive kind, where people can't
fathom some of the things he does to get to the 'bottom' of people's
personalities.
Film Poem
Approx. Duration: 6 mins
Titled
What was happening that Night this sensuous film poem explores the
tangles of reality and pretensions in the art and literary world. It
thrives on a certain erotic tension that propels the poem till its
culmination. Eventually, the erotic experience itself remains somewhat
hazy, somewhere between reality and dream, in search of a religious awe,
but of a different kind.
The
poem is a powerful one and within its short length, experiences many
explosions. The film attempts to capture the aesthetics and eroticism of
the images that constitute the poem.
Short Shorts
Approx Duration: 4 minutes each
Man
and Woman, The Young Prodigy, A letter from a Sardar and How Old am I?
are four extremely short but hilarious Short Films.
Bandish
Approx Duration: 50 mins
In
order to explore the nuances of Bandish (composition) in Hindustani
music, this documentary takes up the metaphor of a river. The river has
its own beauty, the way the water in it flows non stop but the river as
entity remains the same. In the same way, the singer (or the
instrumentalist) goes on weaving various beautiful melodious and rhythmic
patterns in and around the Bandish while the basic Bandish remains the
same.
In
the process it unfolds the nuances of different kinds of compositions,
what aspects take prominence in Dhrupad, what others come into play with
the compositions of Khayal, Thumri, Tappa, Kajari, Geet, Gazal, etc, as
also how compositions are done for instruments like Sitar or Sarangi or
percussions like the Tabla. What is the difference between old
compositions and the new ones. And so on …
Slum, Suburbia and
Bollywood
Approx. Duration: 25 minutes
In
India, the slum and the popular cinema bear a tremendous metaphorical affinity
towards each other. Popular cinema in India can even be called, in many
ways and quite often, the slum's point of view of Indian politics and
society. There is in both of them the same stress on the lower middle
class sensibilities and the same ability to shock the haute bourgeoisie
with the directness, vigor and even crudity of everyday realities.
Just
like the discarded, obsolete population that inhabits the unintended city
is a constant embarrassment to the rest of their urban brethren, the style
of popular cinema is often an embarrassment for the devotees of art films
and high culture. These discards show the same cussed unwillingness to
bow out of history, the same obstinate ability to return and
'illegitimately' occupy a large space in public domain, geographically
just as the popular cinema does, psychologically.
The
documentary, Slum, Suburbia and Bollywood will try to explore the extent
to which the commercial Indian cinema reflects as well as shape our
everyday life and contributes to the growth of popular culture of sorts
(which may not be the mass culture).
The Missing Link
Approx. Duration 45 minutes
The
documentary, The Missing Link, as the name suggests, aims to look into
this once-in-a-lifetime kind of case study in context of one of the most
debated theories of all time --- Darwin's theory of evolution, where he
proposed that men have evolved, over a huge period of time, from apes.
The theory, however, has little proof --- fossil or otherwise --- and has
never been conclusively proved. With the DNA tests and behavioral
observations of these three ape-like creatures born to human parents (who
have also produced five other perfectly normal children), The Missing
Link, becomes an exciting prospect to explore with scientists, naturalists,
scholars, researchers as well as the religious and social pundits.
Qawwali: A Soulful
Flight
Approx Duration: 50 mins
What
is the power of this musical genre called Qawwali? How does it express
itself, revealing to the seeker realms beyond his knowledge? What is the
essence of this shared musical experience?
This,
in very brief, is the experience the documentary, Qawwali: A Soulful
Flight, seeks to explore. In the process, it aims to showcase this unique
genre of light classical music of India and Pakistan in all its
ethno-musical dimensions: the distinctive features of Qawwali music, the
charged ambience of the various Sufi shrines where it is performed, the
belief system behind its mystic bearings and the kitschy glamorization we
have seen in popular films.
A Handful of Sand
Approx. Duration 25 minutes
The
film, A Handful of Sand, will attempt to bring out the sand sculptor,
Sudarshan Patnaik's inner self, in the process of exploring his unique
art (of sculpting in sand) and try to put into perspective, the artist's
struggles and achievements.
Diamond Sized Wound
Approx. Duration: 25 minutes
Diamond
Sized Wound is a lyrical documentary featuring the street children who sell
newspapers and water bottles at the various traffic signals in the city
of Mumbai. The film will attempt to encapsulate the experience these
children go through and contrast it with the rich and stylish mindset of
those who shoo them away from behind their air-conditioned car screens.
|
