19th
Madurai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2017
18 Feet
Dir: Renjit Kuzhur; 77 min; Malayalam with English
subtitles; Documentary; India
Karinthalakoottam is an indigenous band that
propagates the music of soul to connect people with a sense of historic
resolution. 18 feet symbolizes the holy distance dalits, the downtrodden, were
to ensure for the sanctity of upper castes. P R Remesh, a city public-bus conductor,
is the man behind the exuberant squad that drums empathy for all in denial of
historic untouchability attached to the disused community. The troop is the
vanguard in redefining the identity of people who are battered by senseless
incorrectness through centuries. The downtown Kerala band rekindles the sense
of sanity for all with a massage of love and harmony.
Nicobar, a long way
Dir: Richa Hushing; 65 min; Nicobarese, Hindi and English;
Documentary; India
Deep in the Bay of Bengal, the Nicobar archipelago,
a tribal reserve protected under Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal
Tribes Regulation, was worst hit by the Tsunami of 26th December 2004.
Self-subsistent and relatively isolated, post Tsunami the aboriginal world was
suddenly invaded
I am Bonnie
Dir: Farha Katun, Satarupa Santra, Saurabh Kanti Dutta; 45 min; Bengali with English subtitles; Documentary; India
Dir: Farha Katun, Satarupa Santra, Saurabh Kanti Dutta; 45 min; Bengali with English subtitles; Documentary; India
Bonnie (33) is again on the run. He has been on the run from his family and sports fraternity since failing 'sex test' before the Bangkok Asian Games, 1998.
A born intersex, raised by
poor, illiterate and confused parents as a girl named 'Bandana', s/he became
one of the finest strikers of Indian Woman's football team in her/his short
career.
A Sex Reassignment surgery
later transformed her/him to a man but left him without home or career. He left
home, took up idol-making for a living. He met Swati (F24) then; they fell in
love and married soon but had to move once again fearing social backlash.
His fight to establish his
identity, struggle for existence is met by a sarcastic society which is yet to
learn to take 'other genders' seriously.
Mod (70 min)
Dir: Pushpa Rawat; 69 min; India; Documentary;
Documentary; India
'Mod' is an attempt by the filmmaker at
communicating with the young men who hang out at the ‘notorious’ water tank in
her neighbourhood in Pratap Vihar, Ghaziabad. The water tank is a space that is
frequented by the so-called ‘no-gooders’ of the locality, a place where they
play cricket, play cards, drink and smoke up. When she enters the space with
her camera, the boys are curious and at the same time wary of it and her. They
sometimes resist, sometimes protest, and at times, open up. As the film unfolds
we get a hint of the lives the boys lead and the fragile world they create for
themselves at the water tank.
Kakkoos
Dir: Divya Bharathi; 108 min; Tamil with English
subtitles; Documentary; India
The documentary, shot in 25 districts for over a year, conveys
the message that even though manual scavenging was banned in India in 2013 it
continues to exist and conservancy workers are involved in removing human
waste. The film is dedicated to those who maintain a “false silence on manual
scavenging”.
Miryavar Kahi Mahine (Many Months in
Mirya)
Dir: Renu Sawant; 3 hours 50 min; Marathi with Eng
subtitles; Documentary; India
In 2015, I stayed and shot in my
ancestral village in western coastal India, and the film is a record of this
village during that time. The resulting film flows into stories of people and
events happening in the village. The subject's canvass demanded the scale
of the longer narrative form, like a novel in digital video.
Special Service
Dir: Ujjwal Utkarsh; 18:30 min; English, Hindi, Telugu; Documentary; India
Rohith Vemula
committed suicide because of problems he was facing in the institute he was
studying by the virtue of being from a particular caste. With his demise, there
was a wave of protests that happened across the country. The state did try to
repress a lot of these protests. The state, as it is turning out to be, is
becoming more and more authoritarian and the space to dissent is being squashed
systematically.
This piece, special service, revolves around a candle light vigil that was organised in respect of Rohith Vemula in Delhi. Surprisingly, the vigil was also NOT allowed by the state and people at the vigil were detained.
This piece, special service, revolves around a candle light vigil that was organised in respect of Rohith Vemula in Delhi. Surprisingly, the vigil was also NOT allowed by the state and people at the vigil were detained.
This is like
Gold Only
Dir: Ujjwal Utkarsh; 78 min; Maithili/English/Hindi; Documentary; India
Makhana farming is a specialized and painstaking process
practised by farmers of the Mallah community of North Bihar. A species similar
to the lotus family, the fox nut plants are cultivated in ponds and their seed
of are collected from the bottom of the lake. Through an elaborate process of
popping by hand on high heat we get 'makhana' in a state which can be packed
and sold. Despite health risks to them, makhana cultivators continue to follow
this process. The conventional, gruesomely laborious process has the farmers
and their families' lives revolving around it. Due to the seasonal nature of
this process, these families live a migratory way of life and almost everybody
in the family is involved in the process.
In making of an observational piece on the makhana
harvesting and production, there were lots of production issues which made the
filmmaker question the filmmaking process and the idea of the ‘observational’
film. Ee toh sona chhe (This is like Gold only) film juxtaposes the production
process of the film and of makhana making in order to get a deeper insight into
his own ideas of filmmaking, through the particular experience of making this
film.
Survey Number Zero
Dir: Priya Thuvassery; 31 min; Gujarati with Eng
subtitles; Documentary; India
Story of three women from Little Rann of
Kutch, Gujarat. The Salt they make and a Land which has never
been surveyed.
A
Walnut Tree
Dir:
Ammar Azis; 92 min; Documentary; Pakistan
An old man reminisces about a distant homeland. He
wants to return. Internally displaced as a result of the ongoing war between
the Pakistan army and the Taliban and forced to live in a camp, the family is
caught between memories of what life was, an insecure present and a bleak
future.
Silence
in the Courts
Dir:
Prasanna Vithanage; 57 min; Documentary; Sri Lanka
Two women from rural Sri Lanka, sexually abused by a Judge nearly two
decades ago, try in vain to seek justice. As their plea is turned down and
subverted by the country’s highest authorities, noted journalist Victor Ivan
begins to write in-depth stories highlighting their plight, the state of the
justice system and its lack of commitment to the downtrodden – to no
avail. This film traces stories of these hapless women and the journalist
twenty years on, and attempts to understand this shocking miscarriage of
justice and how the powerful can sometimes be above the law.
Camera Threat
Dir: Bernd Lützeler; 30 min; Hindi and English; Short film; Germany
and India
Somewhere in the rather dreary spheres of Mumbai's film
industry, stuck between star-cult, superstition and the daily gridlock, Camera Threat explores
the ambivalent and sometimes paranoid relationship that this film city has with
the moving image as such. Seated on a casting couch, two actors are getting
trapped in their impromptu conversations on the unwanted side effects of a
world that no longer bothers to tell facts from fiction. An expanded
multi-genre film within the constraints of the so-called Masala Formula
popularly known from Indian cinema.
The Simple Day
Dir:
Maria Khristoforova; 21 min; Hindi and English; Documentary; Russia and
India
The simple day in the life of
rickshaw driver in Delhi, India.
Highway Rest Stop
Dir: Isabelle
Ingold; 80 min; Chinese, English, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Portuguese,
Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish; Documentary; France
This film traces out
the portrait of a motorway rest area located in the countryside in the North of
France. It looks like a dream, filled with the whispers thoughts and the lives
of those who work here, as well as those who are just passing through. It is
also a very concrete place, a perfect spot to observe today’s Europe, the
violence carried by the free competition of a single market, the nostalgia
carried by uprooted lives, and all the solitude engendered by our modern world.
No comments:
Post a Comment