DIGITAL COPY ON MAGZTERan unmediated reality. Things are in the film
because the filmmaker put them there. By
shooting, editing, constructing a reality, the
artist is asking the viewer to see it in a particular
way. This is a political act.’
In ‘Pati’, Sohrab Hura shows how people in
an impoverished Madhya Pradesh village have
successfully campaigned for employment-on-
demand, minimum wages and the disbursal
of unemployment allowances, thus keeping
authorities accountable. Largely made up
of black and white photographs and an
explanatory voice over, the film breaks into a
video segment without commentary, where a
toddler ferries a building stone from one pair
of adult hands to another, evoking the abysmal
reality of vast parts of development-hungry
India.
In Payal Kapadia’s ‘The Last Mango before
the Monsoon’, we see a dual narrative. Two
technicians set up cameras in a forest on the
border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala to capture
animal activity at night, while a woman who
has moved away from the forest a long time
ago yearns for her late husband and the forest.
The film’s language evokes the style of both
documentary and narrative fiction, giving the
viewer such little background and context that
the ‘meaning’ of the film is constructed as much
by the film artist as the viewer.
One of the interesting aspects of this alternative
film community is its composition. ‘Women
film artists are a significant part of this space.
They are responsible for pushing the frontiers of
film language,’ says Heredia. One such example
is Shreyasi Kar’s ‘City Beyond’. The film
speculates about the lives led by inhabitants of a
submerged civilisation whose superstructure has
recently been discovered on the ocean floor. The
film moves through the submerged landscape,
gathering glimpses of the life, times and end
of a lost society. Shot using handmade pinhole
cameras and cyanotyped images, the film uses
a traditional premise – excavating the ruins
of a lost world – using arresting, original and
alienating visuals.
Film artist Kush Badhwar is interested in
the shifting of mass media and using artistic
intervention for improvised and informal
political engagement. ‘We in a One Room
Kitchen Field’ is a collaborative film project
that hosts, produces, co-produces and relays
conversations. The project has emerged from
the initiators’ engagement with the city through
perspectives of history, development, trash,
politics and mythology. The resulting version ofStill from jan Villa, Natasha Mendonca,
20:00, 16mm-Digital, Colour, Sound, 2011
Image Courtesy of ExperimentaIAF - Delhi Connecting Art/ FEB 2016 - MAR 2016 / ARTS ILLUSTRATED /^97