From dak at sarai.net Thu Apr 6 20:06:15 2006 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2006 20:06:15 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] APRIL 2006 Message-ID: <4435275F.9000207@sarai.net> ********************************************************************************************************* ***************************************** SARAI NEWSLETTER APRIL 2006 *********************************** ********************************************************************************************************* [[CONTENTS]] *CONVERSATIONS* 1. Nangla's Delhi *FILM* 2. Film @ Sarai: Film Remembers Video +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[CONVERSATIONS]] =============== Nangla's Delhi =============== Over the last 35 years we have seen a massive internal dislocation of habitations and life worlds within this city, Delhi. This is something that started with high intensity in Delhi from the early 70s. Now the process of this internal dislocation has become intense and harder. Nangla Maachi is a 30 year old habitation. It was created by its inhabitants over this period along the river bank and next to Pragati Maidan (Progress Ground). It has now become valuable real estate...Built on prime land for the new urban development, the last week has witnessed the destruction, and slow emptying of Nangla Maachi. Sarai/Ankur had set up a cybermohalla lab in Nangla Maachi two years ago. Many a practitioner has been through the lab. Over these two years, diaries have been written by the lab practitioners. These diary entries stubbornly remind us that Nangla was made into a lively, heterogeneous habitation by countless peoples efforts and needs to be remembered for this creative act of making and finding ways of living together. The diary is now a record of a contested terrain of the violence of dislocation. We have set up a blog in both English and Hindi, to share with a wider public the various diary entries of the practitioners. Since the eviction process began, practioners have been blogging almost on a daily basis. Do visit it, read it, circulate it, share it and link it further. Your comments and stories will be very valuable. English language blog: http://nangla.freeflux.net/ Hindi language blog: http://nangla-maachi.freeflux.net/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [[FILM]] We are happy to announce that film screenings curated by the Sarai programme will also be screened at the Khoj artists collective. This marks a collaborative initiative between Sarai and Khoj. This new series of screenings will run on Thursdays at Khoj at 6:00 pm and on Fridays at Sarai-CSDS at the usual time, 4:30 pm. These screenings have been an integral part of Sarai's programming and public profile for five years. The screenings have been a space for people from diverse backgrounds - academics and students, practitioners, artists and researchers – to converse with each other about the way in which films speak to the times that they were made in, and to the times we live in. We hope that with this initiative a new public will find the Sarai screenings, and that Sarai will find a new public, bringing new energies and approaches into talking and thinking about films. Hoping to see many of you, and many good films. films @ khoj – Thursdays, 5.30 pm Khoj Studios S-17 . Khirki Extension. (Near Sai Baba Temple) New Delhi-17 Call:91-11-55655874\73 www.khojworkshop.org Films @ Sarai – Fridays, 4.30 pm ===================================== Film @ Sarai: April – May 2006 ===================================== *Film Remembers Video * TV Video bahut hua Sabke sar main dard hua Ticket kataa ke cinema jaa Aayega bada mazaa… -Amitabh Bachchan’s character in Manmohan Desai’s Ganga Jamuna Saraswati, 1989/./ This April we continue Sarai's occasional series of film curations on remembering technologies – both iconic and everyday – which characterize the 'modernity' we inhabit. This month’s curation looks at cinema’s anxious relationship with Video – a technology which deeply disquiets celluloid. The curation focuses on this disquiet – delving into the cinema’s meditations on video as voyeurism, video as pornography, video as horror, and video as the fear of the untrammeled circulation of the image, as most strikingly represented in 'Ringu/The Ring’. ********************************** 6th April, Khoj 7th April, Sarai **||Videodrome||** Directed by David Cronenberg 1983, 89 minutes When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called /Videodrome/. As he struggles to unearth the origins of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation. /Videodrome/ is one of writer/director David Cronenberg’s most original and provocative works, fusing social commentary with shocking elements of sex and violence. ********************************** 13th April, Khoj 14th April, Sarai **||Sex, Lies, and Videotape|| * * Directed by Steven Soderbergh 1989, 100 minutes Winner of the Palm d'Or and Best Actor awards at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival Sex, Lies, and Videotape transformed the independent film industry and turned writer-director Steven Soderbergh into the envy of aspiring filmmakers everywhere. The movie explores the sexual shenanigans and personal preoccupations of its four central characters, revolving around a selfish lawyer who responds to his wife by having an affair with her free-spirited sister. But when the lawyer's college roommate arrives for an unexpectedly extended visit, the neglected wife is surprisingly responsive to his hobby of videotaping women as they describe their sexual fantasies… ********************************** 20th April, Khoj 22nd April, Sarai **||Boogie Nights|| * * Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson 1997, 156 minutes Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights is a giddy, transporting examination of the rise and fall of American porn as an almost-mainstream commodity, from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 1980s. At the heart of this multi layered film with many actors and many sub-plots are adult film director Jack Horner and his protégé, the young porn star Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler. The era of "Boogie Nights" is a time when porn, then shot on film, could still aspire to ‘art’ and when the performers' appeal lay in their resemblance to ‘real’ people. The industry changes with video. Not having to worry about filling theaters, porn was free to specialize in every possible fetish viewers might want to indulge while watching at home. Anticipating the power of the VCR's fast-forward button, porn could do away with story line altogether. In "Boogie Nights," video spells the end of Jack Horner's dreams. Anderson is sharp enough to see the cultural irony in this: porn becoming more widespread and retrograde than ever when the country, electing Reagan, took its most conservative turn… ********************************** 27th April, Khoj 28th April, Sarai **||Ringu||* * Directed by Hideo Nakata 1998, 96 minutes Based on the novel by Koji Suzuki, the movie follows Nanako, a reporter who becomes obsessed with the spooky schoolyard tales that tell of a tape that, when watched, results in the viewer’s death seven days later. /Ringu/’s fear of technology, which is exemplified by the choice of instruments its demon uses in invoking its terror (videotape and telephone), seems indicative of a larger cultural discomfort with such media. That the lead character is a reporter, and a perpetrator of media, doesn’t seem to be lost on the film. The trials that she’s put through would almost seem to be fitting retribution if they weren’t so extreme. The deadline that looms over Nanako’s head this time seems to be payback for the exploitation that the media had caused in the past. Since the movie’s ending seems to actually encourage piracy, everything about the film seems to be filled with self-loathing and a longing for self-destruction that lies just under the surface… **** All screenings at Khoj at 5.30 pm, Thursdays All screenings at Sarai at 4.30 pm, Fridays The programme is subject to last minute changes. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ END OF NEWSLETTER