[Sarai Newsletter] MARCH 2005
The Sarai Programme
dak at sarai.net
Wed Mar 2 17:37:47 IST 2005
CONTENTS: MARCH 2005
Seminar @ Sarai
4th 'Hindi Cinema and the Politics of Music in Trinidad', by
Tejaswini Niranjana
10th 'Water Bodies of Delhi', by Sohail Hashmi
30th 'Urdu Hai Jiska Naam', a film on the history of Urdu, introduced by
Sohail Hashmi
Presentation @ Sarai
29th 'You Are Not Here', Poetry Reading by Jeet Thayil
Film @ Sarai: Asian Horror Film Festival
11th 'The Eye', Dir. Danny and Oxide Pang
18th 'Bhoot', Dir. Ram Gopal Varma &
'Dark Water', Dir. Hideo Nakata
19th 'Gawi', Dir. Byeong-ki Ahn
Call for Applications: Digital Video Image Masterclass
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MEDIA PUBLICS & PRACTICES SEMINAR
Friday, March 4, 3:30 pm
"Suku Suku What Shall I Do?": Hindi Cinema and the Politics of Music in
Trinidad
by Tejaswini Niranjana, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore
Niranjana investigates the impact of Hindi popular cinema from India on the
Trinidadian musical genres of calypso, soca, and chutney-soca. Ever since the
first Indian film, 'Bala Joban', was shown in Trinidad in 1935, the
descendants of the ex-indentured labourers who form the Indo-Trinidadian
population have been incorporating elements from Hindi cinema into their own
cultural practices. I suggest that in the musical public sphere of Trinidad,
Hindi film as visual product is downplayed in favour of film music which
seems to have played for decades a crucial role in the formation of "Indian"
identities. The Hindi films themselves have aroused a host of ambivalent
responses amongst East Indians, while the songs and their many "versions"
continue to circulate in diverse spaces, including Creole-dominated ones.
The paper will explore, with reference to contemporary Trinidadian music,
formations of diasporic modernity which have taken shape outside the
narratives of nationalist modernity in India, suggesting that these
formations may help us re-think dominant representations of "Indian culture"
in India.
Tejaswini Niranjana is Director and Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of
Culture and Society, Bangalore. She is the author of 'Siting Translation:
History, Post-structuralism and the Colonial Context' and the co-editor of
'Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India'.
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URBAN CULTURES AND POLITICS SEMINAR SERIES
Thursday, March 10, 3:30 pm
Water Management in Medieval Times: Water Bodies of Delhi
by Sohail Hashmi
This is a short study of the step wells, reservoirs, natural water bodies and
a few canals built in Delhi from the 13th to the 17th Century. The study
woven around 100 transparencies locates these water bodies within the
socio-cultural milieu of the 7 Delhi's and traces their links to the Traders,
Sufis and Rulers and Amirs who had commissioned them. The study also touches
upon the miraculous powers that some of these water bodies were invested with
in popular perception due to their association with prominent Sufis of the
times. The study explores at some length the planning that went into managing
water supply for Shahajahanabad, for both quenching the thirst of its
citizens and for keeping the temperatures within the walled city within
tolerable limits.
Sohail Hashmi is the Centre Director, Leap Years - a Creative Activity Centre
for Children - Vasant Kunj. He has been active with SAHMAT. He is currently
working on 'Shehernama', a 5 part series on walks through Shahjahanabad and a
90 minute AV on K. L. Sehgal. Hashmi also writes a fortnightly column for
'Altamash', an Urdu Journal published from Delhi.
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THE LANGUAGE SEMINAR SERIES
Wednesday, March 30, 2005, 3:30 pm
Urdu Hai Jiska Naam, 120 minutes
A film on the history of Urdu
Directed by Subhash Kapoor
Introduced and discussed by Sohail Hashmi, who conceptualised, researched for
and scripted the film.
The film begins with the shift from Sanskrit to popular Apabhransha languages
including Shaurseni that had by the 10th Century AD spread from the West
Coast of the sub-continent to the East and gave birth to Gujarati, Sindhi,
Punjabi, Braj, Avadhi, Maghdi, Maithli, Bangla and Khari Boli, among others.
The arrival of the Sufis, Central Asian armies and large number of traders
brought in new technologies, new crafts,new languages and scripts from the
11th century and all these began to combine with their South Asian
counterparts to create new vocabularies of Music, Attire, Architecture and
creative expression. All this took place at the shrines of the Sufis, in army
camps, in the bazars and the sarais. The film goes on to trace these many
strains through the centuries and across Delhi, Gulbarga, Gujarat, Avadh and
Bengal.
By the time John Borthwick Gilchrist set up the Fort Williams College in the
1820s at Calcutta, Urdu had grown to become a language that was "spoken and
understood from Gujarat to the Bengal" and it was on Gilchrist's
recommendation that the East India Company gave up their dependence on
Persian and replaced with Urdu.
The rest is more familiar but by no means less exciting history of a language
gone out of favour in recent decades.
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PRESENTATION @ SARAI
Tuesday, March 29, 6:00 pm
'You Are Not Here'
Poetry Reading by Jeet Thayil
Jeet Thayil will read from his most recent collection, 'English'
(Penguin/Rattapallax, 2004) and a selection of newer poems.
'English', has been widely received as an important and unprecented signpost
in the history of Indian English poetry. Fusing lyric and narrative energy in
a drowsy, mongrelized Americanese, alternating between strict and free forms,
Thayil fashions a voice and persona that is only indirectly autobiographical,
half-fiction: addicted to opium, shapeshifting, drifting across borders and
stumbling through rehab, while the surrounding world teeters perpetually on
the brink of apocalypse. "Ruined still by syntax", the narrator hangs on the
margins of both America and India because English is his only language of
love, his truest inheritance- "English fills my right hand, silence my left."
Thayil's specialty in these poems is a very finely-tuned emotional precision,
played out in an unmistakable register that is not crudely bitter or caustic,
never heroic, but always undeniably blue, beset by visions.
Jeet Thayil was born in India and educated in Hongkong, New York and Bombay.
In 1998 he returned to New York where he received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence
College and a 2003 poetry award from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
His poems have appeared in 'Stand', 'Verse', 'Agenda', 'London Magazine',
'The Independent', 'Salt Hill' and 'Kaviya Bharati', among many other
journals. He is an editor with 'Rattapallax' and a contributing editor with
'Fulcrum', and is currently based in Bangalore and Delhi.
<http://www.rattapallax.com/thayil.htm>
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FILM @ SARAI: Asian Film Cultures
Asian Horror Film Festival
Curated by Konrad Bayer
"Where there are no words, ghosts rule."
(Joseph von Eichendorff)
Osama Bin Laden is like Sadako in 'Ringu': both can be captured only on video.
Popular cinema in general, and horror cinema in particular, reflects the
tendencies and moods of its time, it deals with the "Zeitgeist". Given this
asumption it is worth investigating the rise in production of films that fall
in the "ghost-movie" genre in the last few years.
This revival of ghost movies is not restricted to Hollywood mainstream cinema,
with films like 'The Others' (2001) or 'The Sixth Sense' (1999), but can also
be seen in the regional cinemas of Asia. Most notable among these are
Japanese horror films including 'Ringu' (1998), 'Dark Water' (2001) and
'Ju-On' (2001), that became big successes in Asia and Europe and are even
being remade for an American audience.
But this trend is not restricted to Japan. South-Korea produced 'Gawi' (2001),
a teenage angst ghost drama, Hong Kong's Pang brothers produced 'The Eye'
(2002), and India had 'Bhoot' (2003), taking the genre a step further on the
Subcontinent. To take a closer look at ghost-cinema in Asia, we will screen
and discuss the films 'Dark Water', 'The Eye', 'Gawi' and 'Bhoot'.
All four films are located in urban space. Unlike in the classic ghost-movie,
an isolated surrounding with one lonely, pseudo-gothic building is no longer
necessary. The ghosts are among us in the city. The city generates its own
ghosts.
In the four films recurring images are used to depict urbanity: streets and
traffic, multi-storeyed concrete buildings, elevators and stairways,
technical gadgets (often surveillance cameras). Are these images are also
metaphors for the fear of living in polluted and unhealthy surroundings, for
isolation in an anonymous society, domestic violence and social control?
Questions about the representation of urbanity, the role of women in these
films, traditional and local concepts of ghosts and the aesthetics of threat
will also be asked and hopefully answered.
Friday, March 11, 4:30 pm
The Eye (2002), 98 minutes
Directed by Danny and Oxide Pang, Hong Kong
This ghost story revolves around a blind woman who regains her sight after a
corneal transplant from an unknown donor, albeit with the unexpected side
effect of seeing dead people. As her vision slowly becomes better, the
ghostly apparitions become more intense and invasive, and it seems that in
Hong Kong, a city of seven million people, there is almost a restless spirit
lurking around every corner...
Friday, March 18, 3:00 pm
Bhoot (2003), 113 minutes
Directed by Ram Gopal Varma, India
'Bhoot' shows a woman who is possessed by ghosts and how the people around her
deal with the situation. By using the theme of possession as a vehicle, the
film explores the dark side of contemporary urban India.
AND
Dark Water (2001), 97 minutes
Directed by Hideo Nakata, Japan
'Dark Water' tells the story of a single mother, who lives with her small
daughter in a run-down apartment building. Not only are the rooms of their
flat wet and unhealthy, but they appear also to be haunted. Although Hideo
Nataka doesn't use much effects nor any violent scenes in 'Dark Water', he
succeeded in making one of the scariest films ever.
Saturday, March 19, 3:00 pm
Gawi (2001), 97 minutes
Directed by Byeong-ki Ahn, Korea
'Gawi' is the Korean word for scissors and in some senses the film is about
cuts. The cuts one gets when growing up. A mix of a 'coming of age' film and
a ghost film, 'Gawi' deals with issues of teenage angst - the fear of being
rejected and the inability to fit in.
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Call For Applications
DIGITAL VIDEO IMAGE MASTERCLASS @ Sarai
Masterclass Tutor: Kabir Mohanty
Kabir Mohanty works in film and in video. In the former as a film director of
an ensemble form shooting in 35mm, working with actors in a tradition of
filmmakers before him that thought of film as a serious art form. In video he
works more as a solo artist, bringing to video the hands-on, performative
aspect of music or drawing. For Kabir, the two are related in many ways and
not mutually exclusive.
His films and videos have been shown at many festivals and art venues in India
and abroad. He has received support in the form of a number of international
grants and awards. Kabir studied economics at Presidency College, Calcutta
and film and video at the University of Iowa in the United States. From
September 2002 till June of 2004 he was a visiting artist in UCLA's art
department. He is currently working on a number of digital video pieces,
installations, single channel works and a feature length video essay towards
two solo shows next year.
The duration of the workshop is ten weeks commencing from Saturday, April 23,
2005. The participants will meet every Saturday, thereafter for 4 to 5 hours,
until June 25, 2005,
Those interested may send a short resume with a one-page note on why they want
to attend this workshop to iram at sarai.net
Last Date for applications: March 20, 2005
Selected participants will be informed on email by April 15, 2005
Masterclass Fee: Rs. 2000/- to be paid after confirmation of selection.
The Digital Video Image: Kabir Mohanty
The video image is almost instantly generated. You could switch on the camera,
take off the lens cap, and press auto exposure. There is an image, press
record and you are shooting video. A child when given a pencil and a piece of
paper does not hesitate to draw the first lines unless he is being punished.
It is this spontaneous, drawing-like gesture, this anybody-can, this
there-is-nothing-technical-about-it core of video, this pencil-like beginning
that I would like to make with this workshop. From this child-like start,
begin to connect the camera to one?s imagination, to composition?
Smaller cameras have allowed anybody to make images, the way Godard said ?when
film becomes as cheap as paper and pencil, great films will be made?. To my
mind, these cameras have allowed the immediacy of drawing to be brought back.
A particular kind of immediacy, and a contraction of time, a possible
creation here and now.
In this ten-week workshop I would like to go back to video?s basic parameters,
exposure, focus, its horizontal axes movements, namely panning left and
right, its vertical axes movements, namely tilting up and down. If one has a
lot of prior experience in video, this workshop does not ask you to leave
anything behind. On the contrary, to bring to the basics, all the
compositional preparedness that one already has.
The workshop assumes that the practitioner is going to handle the camera
herself. At times one may become a composer for a particular work and need an
instrumentalist like Gary Hill in his beautiful 4-minute video, ?Site
Recite?.
These weeks are also preparing sight, preparing the self. What will one do if
one is never able to raise money. Again, the eye as intuitive knowledge in
Stan Brakhage.
All the exercises or studies if you will are to be performed mos, with the
rider that the camera mic is to be left on. A level should be set for sound
for the camera mic and then not tampered with during shooting.
When one gives to an exercise it gives back. Hindustani musicians define a
practice of the sargam or doing the scales. Then, the most minor deviations
from this scale as a bend in the note towards the next note or the meend
becomes the beginning of a profound musical expression. It is the beginning
of movement. What is the basic scale of your shot? Do you think about it?
Am I laying down some essential characteristics of the medium? Is this the
only way to think about the medium?
The answer to the second question is a definite ?No?. The first question is
harder to answer. One would like to address it through the quarter without
being reductive. Here are certain ways of thinking about the medium from a
practitioner?s point of view. These could be thought of as a series of yoga
asanas. They could remain physical or a formal examination only or they can
become artistic content, when we simply say yes there is something to this,
this speaks, when the yoga asana connects mind and body and becomes
simultaneously dance and self-knowledge.
This course is about attractions, and provocations, through doing.
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Programmes are held in the Seminar Room, CSDS, unless otherwise indicated.
All programme subject to last minute changes.
--
Ranita Chatterjee
Programme Coordinator
The Sarai Programme
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
Tel: (+91) 11 23960040
(+91) 11 23942199, ext 307
Fax: (+91) 11 23943450
www.sarai.net
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