2.00 pm
‘Chalo Hamara Des (Come to my Country)’
Journeys with Kabir and Friends – a documentary film by Shabnam Virmani
98 min (2008)
A
journey in search of the “des” (country) invoked in the
poetry of Kabir, a 15th century Indian mystic, this
film interweaves the stories of two people from two very
different countries – Indian folk singer Prahlad Tipanya and
North American scholar Linda Hess. Where is Kabir’s country?
The answer is elusive, as we journey through song and poem
into the public and private lives of these two people, brought
together in an unlikely friendship by the cross-cultural
resonance of Kabir.
Chalo Hamara Des is one of
4 documentary films by Shabnam Virmani, narrating a journey
through contemporary spaces touched by the music and poetry of
the 15th century mystic weaver-poet of north India, Kabir. We
meet a diverse array of people – an urban folklorist, a street
fruit seller, a social activist, a Dalit folk singer, an
American scholar, a neo-fascist cleric of a Kabir sect, Muslim
singers from India and Pakistan – each encounter
offering a moment of insight into the poetry and its
contemporary meanings. We glimpse not one but many Kabirs.
Sometimes he beckons, sometimes he baffles, but always he
pushes us to self-interrogate, to question the boundaries of
our identity, nation, ideology, caste and religion, making
these journeys unrelentingly inward even as they venture
outward
Shabnam Virmani has directed several
award-winning documentaries and radio programs in close
partnership with grassroots women’s groups in India. In 1990,
she co-founded the Drishti Media, Arts and Human Rights
collective in Ahmedabad. For the last 6 years she is Artist in
Residence at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology
in Bangalore, India
and has been immersed in the Kabir project (www.kabirproject.org),
which consists of a series of journeys in quest of this 15th
century mystic poet in our contemporary worlds.
Shown in:
One Billion Eyes Documentary
Film Festival, August 2008, Chennai, World Performing Arts
Festival, Nov 13-23,
2008, Lahore, Pakistan
monday 23rd february
4 pm
‘Scribbles
on Akka ‘ Directed by Madhushree Dutta
Scribbles
on Akka is a short film on the life and work of the 12th
Century saint poet Mahadevi Akka. Her radical poems, written
with the female body as a metaphor, have been composed and
picturised in contemporary musical language. Mahadevi, famed
as Akka-elder sister, while leaving the domestic arena in
search of God, also abandoned modesty and clothing. The film
explores the meaning of this denial through the work of
contemporary artists and writers and testimonies of ordinary
folks who nurtured her image through centuries in their
folklore and oral literature. A celebration of rebellion,
feminity and legacy down nine hundred years.
tuesday 24th february 2009
2 pm ‘Oceans of Wisdom’
by
Rajiv Mehrotra
This documentary is a
biographical account of the life of Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai
Lama. It contrasts the Dalai Lama's non-violent campaign to
free his homeland, Tibet with the deadly reality of the
Chinese occupation. It describes the struggle of traditional
Tibetan society to survive under occupation by a totalitarian
Chinese regime.
tuesday 24th february 2009
2.30 pm
‘Eyes of
Stone’ a documentary film by
Nilita Vachani
91 min (1990)
Mewari and Hindi with English subtitles
Eyes
of Stone
is a film about rural women in Bhilwara, Rajasthan and their
rituals of possession and exorcism: expressions of faith,
rebellion and healing that thrive within the confines of a
stringent patriarchal order. The film is a deep and unsettling
exploration of one case of possession, which taken to its
logical conclusion, becomes an eloquent testimony to the
strengths and sadnesses and indeed the subversions in womens'
lives.
Shanta has been married to NandaLal since the
age of 10. She became a mother at the age of 12, and now, at
the age of 19 is a mother of two sons. She has been severely
ill for five out of her nine years of married life. She is
given to raging head-aches, body aches and fevers, a sense of
dissociation and disinterest in the world around her. She has
been taken to local doctors and shamans, fortified with
injections and mantras, but nothing has helped. Her family is
convinced that she is possessed, bewitched by the evil gaze of
a 'dakan', physically inhabited by a 'bhut'. When the film
visits Shanta, she has come to live with her parents and her
brother in her native village, Keriya. With considerable
expense and difficulty her family arranges weekly pilgrimages
to the temple of the Goddess Bhankya Mata in Asind. It is well
known that at the court of the Goddess no spirit goes
undefeated. The exorcism may last five weeks or seven, but
ultimately the evil spirit is forced to leave. Ever since
Shanta has begun visiting the goddess, she goes into trance
and the spirit speaks, a sure sign that her illness is not an
ordinary one.
It is now assured that Shanta will be cured.
Her truck-driver husband will come to take her home and life
will return to 'normal'. In this normalcy lies the key to
possession.
tuesday 24th february 2009
4.15 pm
‘Basant’ a
documentary film by Yousuf Saeed
Hindustani/English
13 min (1997)
Few would know that Basant Panchami, the ancient Hindu
festival of spring, is also celebrated by many Muslims in
India, especially at the dargah (tomb) of Nizamuddin Aulia at
Delhi, every year. This 700-year-old colourful tradition is
attributed to the Sufis, especially the Chishti saint
Nizamuddin and his disciple Amir Khusrau, who were probably
the first Muslims to have rejoiced at the celebration of
Basant. This short film documents a day in the life of the
Sufis and Qawwals at the tomb of Nizamuddin in Delhi. ,
celebrating Basant.
Screened at the Mumbai International Film
Festival (MIFF'98),
6th International Short Film Festival, Dhaka
(Bangladesh) 1999.
And as part of the lectures at the Centre for South Asia
Studies, Berkeley University, Harvard University, Wolfson
College, Oxford and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes,
Paris.
wednesday 25th february 2009
2 pm ‘Paradise on the River of Hell
’ a
documentary film by Abir Bazaz and Meenu Gaur
29 min (2002)
The
film reflects and refracts the multiple experiences of
tortured subjectivity in Kashmir in the 1990s.
Paradise on a
River of Hell is an award-winning film on Kashmir’s
catastrophic desolation. The violence Kashmir witnessed in the
1990s shattered human dignity and changed everyday Kashmiri
life beyond recognition. The film seeks to reflect and refract
the multiple experiences of tortured subjectivity in the ’90s
Kashmir. Not attempting to situate the 1990s in this or that
event, person, space or time, the film is a mapping of
personal and collective memories of Kashmir
wednesday 25th february 2009
2.40 pm
‘Khel ’ a
documentary film by
Saba Dewan/Rahul
100 min (1994)
Had there ever been an
alternative to the brahmanical vision of fettered and bound
female sexuality? The film makers undertake a journey through
Bundelkhand in search of the elusive Yoginis (divine female
spirits). They meet kol tribal women, see some forgotten
medieval shaktic temples and have some strange adventures. But
do they find the answers?
Screened at The Film De Femmes Festival,
Creitel, France 1996.
wednesday 25th february 2009
4.30 pm
‘Muharram ’
a documentary film by Yousuf Saeed
12 min (1998)
Muharram is the first month of
Islamic calendar.
It commemorates the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussain, the
grandson of the Holy Prophet . This festival starts at the 1st
day of Muharram and lasts for 10 days. Shia Muslims observe
this festival by putting on black clothes, the colour of
mourning and on the 10th day take out large
processions holding banners and carrying models of the
mausoleum of Hazrat Imam Hussain. They show their grief and
sorrow by inflicting wounds on their own bodies with sharp
metal tied to chain with which they scourge themselves. This
is done in order to depict the sufferings of the martyrs.
This short film is about a
passionate Muharram being observed by a small community of
Shias in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh
Screened at The Mumbai
International Film Festival, 2000.
25 min (1991
60 min
(2000)