From dak at sarai.net Fri Nov 1 15:23:21 2002 From: dak at sarai.net (dak at sarai.net) Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2002 09:53:21 GMT Subject: [Sarai Newsletter]November 2002 Message-ID: <20021101.9532100@saumya.sarai.kit> Contents: I Media Art Presentation @ Sarai II Reading @ Sarai III Tactical Media Lab @Sarai IV Films @ Sarai: Italian Neo Realism V Call for Proposals: The Daily Life of Intellectual Property Law --------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------- Dear Friends, November is a busy month at Sarai. We start the month with an introduction to Italian Neo-Realist cinema followed by three classic films in the genre. November is also a month of presentations by residents, a novelist and an artist, who have been at Sarai since September. And in November Sarai will be hosting the Tactical Media Lab with participants from South Asia and the Middle East. We look forward to engaging with you at all these events this November at Sarai. I. Media Art Presentation @Sarai Wednesday, November 6, 4:30 pm, Seminar Room The Kiss, sound and video artwork & Time Lapsed, new media performance improvisation by Dylan Volkhardt, independent Australian media artist, followed by the internationally award-winning documentary, Eternity (1994), 56 mins, Australia Directed by Lawrence Johnston. For forty years in one city a word was written on the street...the word was "eternity". Always the same, written in chalk copperplate script, appearing overnight like frost on the streets of Sydney. Sometimes it would last for days, weeks, even months... eventually it would be washed away by the rain or blown away by the wind... but its memory lingered in the minds of many. In 1956, twenty years after the word first appeared, the writer was discovered and Arthur Stace became known to many as Mr Eternity. Some have said he was a "Great Writer! The Original Graffiti Artist!" Others have denounced him as an eccentric. Director Lawrence Johnston's film is an orchestration of beautiful black and white cinematography with the music of Ross Edwards. In 1994, the year of its making, 'Eternity' went on to win a number of awards including the Best Documentary, Australian Film Critics Circle; Best Cinematography, Australian Film Institute Awards & the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Dylan Volkhardt has been on a residency at Sarai with support from the Australia Council for the Arts since September 2002 and has been working on an installation project with Renu S. Iyer and Girija Vohra from the Sarai Media Lab. The work will be presented at the Tactical Media Lab later this month. II.Reading @ Sarai Thursday, Nov 7, 5:30 pm, Sarai Interface Zone Meaghan Delahunt reads from her first novel, 'In The Blue House' Hounded from country to country by Stalin's GPU agents in January 1937 Leon Trotsky finally finds refuge in Mexico. There he encounters the fire and splendour of the artist Frida Kahlo, who with her husband, Diego Rivera, welcomes Trotsky and his wife Natalia into the Blue House at Coyoacan. Meaghan Delahunt's first novel unravels the passions and betrayals of Trotsky's years in Mexico, and spreads before the reader a panorama of Russian history, revolution and upheaval throughout the first half of the twentieth century. We hear from Stalin's desolate young wife and Trotsky's Ukrainian Jewish father, baffled by the dissolution of his own estate and the rise of his son, and from Trotsky himself, still smarting from his brief love affair with the mesmerising Frida. 'In the Blue House', won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, in the Best Book category in SE Asia and South Pacific, and the Saltire Society Award in Scotland. Meaghan Delahunt was born in Melbourne and currently lives in Edinburgh. In 1997 she won the Flamingo/HQ National short story award in Australia. Her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and nominated for the Macallan short story prize in Scotland. She has been in residency at Sarai, with the support of the Asialink Literature Residency Programme, since September 2002, and is working on her second novel, 'The Prayer Wheel', set in India. III. Tactical Media Lab @Sarai November 14-16, 2002 At Sarai, we see 'Tactical Media" as ways of working with old and new information technologies, ranging from print to photocopying to free software and the internet, to produce easy, accessible, low cost and low tech forms of democratic cultural politics, communication practices and social interventions. The Tactical Media Lab  (TML) is one of a chain of such events, that are taking place in different parts of the world (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Cluj, New York, Delhi and Sydney) as a means of leading up to the fourth Next 5 Minutes Conference in Amsterdam in 2003. For more on the N5M4 and Tactical Media see www.n5m4.org What can you do at the TML @ Sarai ?  >> Interact and network with some of the most interesting Tactical Media projects around today - including the Bytesforall South Asian Network, Open Circle, Indymedia Mumbai, One World South Asia and the Sarai Cybermohalla Project.  >> Learn about Gnu/Linux, Free/Libre Software and Open Source with the Sarai Gnu/Linux Access Project and the Linux Users Group, Delhi.  >>  Find out what is happening on the localization of computing and free software in Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and Persian..  >> Debate on issues of the social implications of creativity and collaboration in digital culture.  >> Participate in a workshop on Innovative Print Strategies for Campaigns.       >> Watch 'The Code', the film on the making of Gnu/Linux.  >> Get involved with the initiation of an Asian Network for Digital Democracy Who should be interested in the TML ? Free software enthusiasts, activists, media practitioners, students and anyone  interested in using communications technologies for social interventions. Invited Speakers and Presentations: ArashZeini, LinuxIran & the Farsi KDE Project Arun Mehta, Telecom Engineer & Internet Activist, Member, N5M4 Editorial Board Gaurab Upadhyay, Bytesforall, Kathmandu Kishore Bhargava, Linux Users Group, Delhi Leo Fernandes, Linux Users Group, Delhi Open Circle Artists Collective, Mumbai Osama Manzar, Founder-Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation Kanti Kumar, One World South Asia Partha Pratim Sarkar, Bytesforall, Dhaka Prabhat, Ankur : Society for Alternatives in Education Pradip Saha, Designer, Editor - "Down To Earth" Magazine Raju Mathur, Linux Users Group, Delhi Sanjay Sharma, co-editor, Divan-e-Sarai Sharad Kukreti, Software Freedom, Dehradun Shaina Anand, Media Activist, Mumbai Shekhar Krishnan and Sanjay Bhangar, Indymedia, Mumbai And , from Sarai Jeebesh Bagchi, Mrityunjoy Chatterjee, Monica Narula, Pankaj Kaushal, Ranita Chatterjee, Ravikant, Ravi Sundaram, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Supreet Sethi, Shveta Sharda & Tripta To register write in soon at dak at sarai.net IV. Films @ Sarai: Italian Neo Realism To celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Italian Neo Realist Cinema we screen three classic movies this month by the Italian masters. This series is curated by Madan Gopal Singh, Film Scholar, Scriptwriter, Singer-Musician & Co-ordinator, Cinema Studies, School of Convergence, New Delhi. All screenings are on Fridays, 4:30 pm, at the Seminar Room, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi -110054. The films are listed in the order of screening. November 1, 2002, 4:30 pm Rome Citta Aperta (Rome Open City) Director: Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 1945, 105 mins Shortly after the liberation of Italy in 1945, Roberto Rossellini took to the war ravaged streets of Rome and filmed a highly unsettling, yet profoundly affirming story of the struggle and defiance of ordinary people in the face of human adversity, and created the indelible image of Rome Open City. Using narrative, documentary styled filmmaking that would come to be known as neorealism, Rome Open City chronicles the plight, not of individual characters, but of the collective soul of the Italian people. Filmed in austere conditions, the technical imperfections of Rome Open City effectively contribute to the film's overall cinema verite appearance. The uneven film stock, salvaged from scrap reels, create a realistic, documentary appearance, blurring the distinction between the created story and the realized drama of post-war turmoil. The inconsistent lighting seems to reflect the frequent brownouts characteristic of fuel shortages and energy rationing. The rawness of Rome Open City elicits a sense of realism to the film, as if experiencing an actual recorded document of a tragic period in history. It is also a testament to humanity's tenacity and perseverance, to the inexorable power of compassion and dignity. November 8, 2002, 4:30 pm La Terra Trema (The Earth Moved) Director: Luchino Visconti; Italy, 1948, 162 mins After his controversial Ossessione, Visconti began to plan a documentary trilogy with "La Terra Trema" as the first installment. The trilogy never materialized; instead, Visconti brought forth this gritty docudrama which focused on a family of Sicilian fishermen who battle the elements, an oppressive social system and their own fates to earn a living. Based on the Giovanni Verga novel, I Malavolgia, La Terra Trema was shot in the peasant fishing village of Acitrezza in southern Italy, and captures the local dialect of the indigenous non-professional (and uncredited) actors. In contrast to Visconti's later, more embellished films, the camerawork in La Terra Trema is distilled, minimalist, and documentary. Visconti uses medium and long shots, graceful pans, location shooting, and natural lighting to reflect the austerity and simple beauty of peasant life: the fishermen's daily preparations before sailing out to sea; the line of fishing boats demarcating the horizon against a setting sun; the Valestro women standing on the rocks amid crashing waves, scanning the turbulent sea. November 22, 2002, 4:30 pm Umberto D Director: Vittorio de Sica; Italy, 1952, 83 mins Umberto Domenico Ferrari (Carlo Battisti) is a proud, retired civil servant struggling to eke out a meager existence on his government pension. The film opens one morning to a group of pensioners, including the frail Umberto, taking their case for equitable compensation to the streets of Rome, only for their demonstration to be quashed by the local police for failing to file a permit. Umberto's rent is in arrears, and despite his twenty year residence at the house, his landlady has threatened to evict him if he is unable to settle his debt by the end of the month. His only sources of comfort are his faithful and well-behaved dog, Flag, and the landlady's cheerful, attentive maid, Maria, who is equally in danger of losing her employment and lodging after discovering that she is pregnant. Through the recurring imagery of motion and activity, de Sica contrasts Umberto's age and wavering sense of purpose with the vitality of hope and the process of living: the pensioner demonstration; the hurried pace of commuters; the passing of cable cars; the children playing. Vittorio de Sica presents an honest, unsentimental and profoundly moving portrait on aging, dignity and resilience in Umberto D. We will be unable to screen any film on the last friday of November (ie the 29th) as the Seminar Room will be busy. We will resume regular screenings in December. V. Call for Proposals: Sarai and Alternative Law Forum welcomes applications from students  interested in attending a work shop on THE DAILY LIFE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW” We are looking for students who are interested in critical research on issues related to IPR, the public domain and issues arising from new technologies. Students will be paid a stipend to attend the workshop. One of the aims of the workshop is to get students interested in emerging  areas of research to begin a dialogue with each other and become a part of a larger research community, critically examining issues of law and culture. Please note that we want something concrete to come out of the workshop so students interested in attending it should look to contribute significantly and not merely attend for the purpose of scoring brownie points on their CV. Interested students should send in a small essay responding to the concept  note along with a (very) small CV or Bio data. For the concept note please go to https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law and  look for 'The daily life of IPR' in the archive. Applications can be sent either by good old fashioned snail mail to: Lawrence Liang Alternative Law Forum No. 122/4, Infantry Road, Bangalore- 560001 Or by email to lawrenceliang at vsnl.net The Workshop will be held on December 20-21, 2002, at Sarai, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054. That's what we have this November. Watch out for detailed schedules of the Tactical Media Lab soon in your mailboxes. Cheers, Ranita The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054. Tel: (+91) 11 3960040 (+91) 11 3951190 Fax: (+91) 11 3943450 www.sarai.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: