From dak at sarai.net Thu Oct 11 09:46:59 2007 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:16:59 -1200 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] October Newsletter- 2007 Message-ID: <470DA3BB.3020206@sarai.net> Newsletter- October 2007 [[CONTENTS]] SEPTEMBER REVIEW CINE: Creative Industries Network Events Suzana Cook at Sarai ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Announcement RGF-Sarai FLOSS fellowship announcement --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Films at Sarai Sai Paranjpye Comedies Chasme Buddoor Katha Curated by Manvi Sharma The Lightning Testimonies Director: Amar Kanwar -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comic Book Reading Reading on Tintin Comic Series Speaker: Orijit Sen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Friends, First a review of last month’s happenings at Sarai and elsewhere. SEPTEMBER REVIEW: CINE: Creative Industries Network Events London’s Living Room, City Hall, GLA September 3rd, 2007 Organized by Watermans Arts Centre, CINE was part of the 'India Now' events. ‘India Now’ was a 3 month season centering on contemporary trends in Indian art and culture. The evening programme, held at the City Hall was chaired by Andrew Ward, Director of Development, Thames Valley University and speakers included Ali Zaidi, Artistic Director, Motiroti. Iram Ghufran spoke about the works and processes of the Media Lab. Using 'Building Sight'* as an exemplary model of engagement and interaction between art practice and theory, then on exhibition at Watermans, Iram spoke of Sarai's commitment to collaborative practice, to innovation and experimentation. The event attracted artists, film makers, media students, musicians, academics, and writers. The presentations were followed by informal interaction with the speakers. 'Building Sight' to quote from the curatorial note, “is a sketch of how a way of thinking about a city has to be constructed, brick by brick. Cities are being built all the time. Construction never ends; no one can say precisely when it began, work is in progress." The exhibition brings together together architects, writers, historians, film scholars, cinematographers, researchers and practitioners onto a platform set in contemporary art practice. Some of the works on display such as Autopoesis (Ravikant Sharma + Prabhat Kumar Jha), City Guide I (Solomon Benjamin) and A Wall and a Sofa (CyberMohalla Ensemble) were produced in collaboration with Sarai Media Lab. Works on show from the Sari Media Lab were: -Ectropy Index by Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Monica Narula) + Iram Ghufran+Mrityunjay Chatterjee with research inputs from Taha Mehmood. This html info face work builds an argument through research notes and repurposed cultural material. "Ectropy" means a general increase in organization. An "ectropy index", therefore, is a measure of the increase of information, or of order, in a given system. Identity cards and identity theft, fingerprints and forgeries, surveillance and shadows, data bodies and data crashes, biometrics and body sculpting seem to define significant features of the topography of our moment. Ectropy Index seeks to create a tension between entropic and ectropic impulses continually contesting the levels of order and systematization within a system. For more see http://www.sarai.net/practices/media-forms/ectropy-index -City Games: Sarai.txt by Broadsheet Collective (Aarti Sethi, Iram Ghufran, Shveta Sarda) + Mrityunjay Chatterjee City Games is a special edition of Sarai.txt, a periodic experimental publication that interprets and renders research about urban realities. City Games uses interesting image - text juxtapositions to raise some questions to the city. It turns the ordered forms of urban space inside-out, and opens up a poetics of the ‘interiority’ of exposed spaces in the routine of the city. To download a pdf version, go to http://www.sarai.net/publications/sarai.txt/07-city-games For all issues of Sarai.txt, go to http://www.sarai.net/publications/sarai.txt/ * Building Sight: Curatorial Project by Raqs Media Collective was on show at Watermans from Friday 29th Jun - Mon 10th September. Exhibiting artists included: Sanjay Kak, Ruchir Joshi, Satyajit Pande, Solomon Benjamin, Ravikant Sharma, Prabhat Kumar Jha, Nancy Adajania, CyberMohalla Ensemble, Sarai Media Lab and the Sarai.txt Broadsheet Collective. See - http://www.watermans.org.uk/exhibitions/20072007building_sight_curatorial_project/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Suzana Cook at Sarai September 22nd, 2007 Susana Cook's solo performance, 'The Unpatriotic Act, Homeland Insecurities', ran to a packed house on Saturday, Sept 22nd, at the Sarai cafe. Susana was co-hosted by Nigah and Sarai. Anurima Bannerji, poet and dance theorist, and Susana's partner, opened the act with 3 poems. The poems were around themes of sexual violence and identity. There were many takers and appropriate applause. Susana started her performance invoking a big gay piano. It was an immediate hit. She was quick and relentless. The gay piano gave way to a childhood in a circus and being abandoned by them along with Sandy the monkey. She spoke of a journey north, with Sandy for a while, and then having to lose Sandy one day because he found his way. She talked about negotiating and being in life as it happens and of looking for work and love and sex and being hated and hating and wanting to create art and being its embodiment and its beginning and end. And then she declared, "When I die, I want to become a website…" After this she went on to the politics in the US of A, about the way life is in America post September 11th, and freedom according to national security, and God. Her earlier part was played with randomness and she presented everyday situations in a manner that felt ludicrous and absurd and lucid at the same time. The parts about America were a little predictable, but her use of a couple of bizarre images, made the performance highly enjoyable. The programme was concluded with a question-answer session. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Upcoming Events and an Announcement: This month as autumn sets in, we can make ourselves cozy with three film screenings, of which two will be Sai Paranjpye’s light hearted films Chasme Buddoor and Katha and the third will be Amar Kanwar’s latest venture, The Lightning Testimonies. We have a comic book reading event at the end of the month which is in collaboration with the French Culture Centre. But first we bring you the announcement of an initial list of proposals that have been accepted for the RGF-Sarai FLOSS Fellowships Programme. Hope you will make yourself available for the events and access the particulars announced to you. Best, Mitoo Das Programme Coordinator Sarai, CSDS Email me at: mitoo at sarai.net …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Announcement: This is the initial list of proposals that have been accepted for the RGF-Sarai FLOSS fellowships programme. Here is the current list of fellows for the 2007-2008 cycle: 1. Sawood Alam, et al: Urdu Localization of GNOME 2.20 2. Sachin Joshi, Venkatesh Keri: Hindi Speech Recognition System using CMU Sphinx Framework 3. Ravishankar Shrivastava: Hindi Localization of KDE 4 4. Dr. C. S. Yogananda, and D. Shivashankar: SAGAR: Typesetting Indian languages in TeX / LaTeX FLOSS fellows will be contacted independently to inform them of details. This year, Sarai received over 30 proposals spanning a wide range of topics, of which more than half were of high quality. It has been a really difficult task for us to try to fit the number of excellent proposals into the available resources, and in fact we have decided to actively solicit more funding in order to be able to accommodate more of these. Thus, in about 4 months time, we expect to make an announcement of a second set of fellowships from among the short list below: 1. Kishore Asok: A Beginner's Guide and Video Presentation on Learning Science with Phoenix and Free Software 2. Niyam Bhushan: Documentation for 'Digital Color Workflows' under FOSS 3. Sriram Chaudhary, and Jagadeesh Gorla: Rupantar - An English to Hindi Translation Package 4. Abhishek Choudhary, Sweta Choudhary: Hindawi Indic Programming Languages and System Software 5. Jayesh Goel Providing an Information Dissemination System for the City Public Transport 6. Hassath Assessment of the ICT Practices of a Sample Set of NGOs in Delhi, and an Exploration of their Readiness to Convert to FLOSS 7. Anand Kulkarni: Localizing Open Office User Guide in Marathi and Urdu, and Development of Animated Software for Open Office Instruction 8. Abhishek Kumar: Enhancement of News rack for Media Analysis 9. Prem Kumar, et al: Prajna FLOSS corps for Teaching FLOSS-based Solutions, with an Aim to Uplifting the Poor. 10. Jayasimha Makhineni: Moodle for Hindi and Telugu Languages 11. Hari Prasad Nadig Aspell Dictionary and Localisation work in Kannada 12. Fred Noronha Book of Stories about FLOSS work in India, Asia, and Africa. 13. Santhosh Thottingal: Aspell Malayalam Spelling Checker Please contact floss at sarai.net should you have any further queries. For a public discussion on this topic, please address posts to the Sarai PRC mailing list: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Films at Sarai: Chasme Buddoor and Katha. Director: Sai Paranjpye Curated By: Manvi Sharma “Sai Paranjpye and her films have always been an inspiration for me and have helped me to develop a taste in filmmaking. Her films encouraged me to broaden my imagination of films to a certain detailed perspective. It is obvious from the kind of films she has made that she can easily play around with the serious genre (Sparsh) and the light rib-tickling films (Chasme Buddoor) with much ease. At a time when filmmakers of parallel cinema displayed their concerns of the then social and political situation in a profound way, Sai chose the mid-path between commercial and serious cinema by inducing humour in the day to day concerns of social life. Though most of you must have seen these two light-hearted films, Chasme Buddoor and Katha, come and watch them again and just feel laid-back and free from the hustle and bustle of your daily life. I promise you, Sai’s films have the magic to do that to you!”-Manvi Sharma 1. Chasme Buddoor, 1981 Director: Sai Paranjpye Cast: Farooq Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Saeed Jaffrey, Ravi Baswani and Rakesh Bedi Length: 145 mins Language: Hindi 12th October, 4:30 pm Seminar Room, CSDS Chashme Buddoor is that rare comic Hindi film which is funny without being puerile. This Sai Paranjpye humour fest was a frothy hit when released in 1981 and brought about a mini revival of clean, homespun comedies. Two womanizing slackers, Omi and Jai (Rakesh Bedi and Ravi Baswani respectively) attempt to woo the new girl (Deepti Naval) in the neighbourhood, and fail - miserably. Their third room-mate (Farooq Shaikh), shy, and a bookworm - succeeds, much to their chagrin. The two scheme up comical ideas to split the lovebirds, so that their secrets and humiliation are not revealed. This was a film whose off-the-cuff insights rang true and were funny as well. With the zaniness factor kept within believable limits and with its frantic pacing, this whacked out comedy is simply bags of fun. 2. Katha, 1983 Director: Sai Paranjpye Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Farooq Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Jalal Agha and others Length: 141mins Language: Hindi 19th October, 4:30 pm Seminar Room, CSDS Rajaram P. Joshi (Naseeruddin Shah) is a middle-class Clerk living in a chawl in Bombay. He is secretly in love with his neighbor, Sandhya Karnik (Deepti Naval) but is unable to disclose his love for her. Rajaram's fast-tallking friend, Bashudev (Farooq Shaikh) comes for a visit and makes himself at home. Bashudev starts wooing Sandhya and soon both in love with each other. The Karniks decide to marry Sandhya and Bashudev, much to the misery of Rajaram. But on the day of the engagement, Bashudev disappears, and the engagement is called-off. Rajaram offers to marry the devastated Sandhya, but she tells him that she has been very intimate with Bashudev, and is pregnant, and it remains to be seen if Rajaram will accept Sandhya or otherwise. About the Director (Sai Paranjpye): A woman director/writer, Sai Paranjpye started her career as a producer for Delhi Doordashan Television. She directed two award-winning films for children Jadoo Ka Shankh (1974) and Sikhandar (1976) while she was in charge of the Children's Film society. Her first feature film, Sparsh (The Touch) (1978-79), won three national awards, her next two films, Chashme Buddoor (1981-82) and Katha (1983-84) were light comedies, and her fourth feature, Disha (Immigrants) (1990-91) was a social commentary on migrant workers' plight. Following The Forest Love Bird in 1994, she made Saaz (Melody) in 1997, which is inspired by the life story of two legendary singers of Indian commercial cinema. About Manvi Sharma: Manvi Sharma did her graduation in journalism from Makhanlal Chaturvedi University of Mass Communication in the year of 2007. Her first experience in film making has been as a script writer and assistant director for a short fiction film “THE REFLECTION” under the production of Films For Freedom. She has herself scripted and directed three short films “The Penultimate Truth, Last Minute…? Descending Dawn”. She is a member of Film Writers Association of India and of India Habitat Film Club. She is currently working as journalist for a website named thespiangroup. The Lightning Testimonies, 2007 Director: Amar Kanwar Length: 116 mins Language: English/ Hindi 26th October, 4:30 pm Seminar Room, CSDS Why is one image different from the other? Why does an image seem to contain many secrets? What can release them so as to suddenly connect with many unknown lives? The Lightning Testimonies reflects upon a history of conflict in the Indian subcontinent through experiences of sexual violence. As the film explores this violence, there emerge multiple submerged narratives, sometimes in people, images and memories, and at other times in objects from nature and everyday life that stand as silent but surviving witnesses. In all narratives the body becomes central – as a sit for honour, hatred and humiliation and also for dignity and protest. As the stories unfold, women from different times and regions come forward. The film speaks to them directly, trying to understand how such violence is resisted, remembered and recorded by individuals and communities. Narratives hidden within a blue window or the weave of a cloth appear, disappear and are then reborn in another vocabulary at another time. Using a range of visual vocabularies the film moves beyond suffering into a space of quiet contemplation, where resilience creates a potential for transformation. Amar Kanwar is an independent film maker, living in and working from New Delhi. Responding to conditions in contemporary India, his films primarily concerns issues relating to violence, politics, ecology and sexuality. While Kanwar’s film A Season Outside (1998) deals with a personal and philosophical passage through many zones of violence and non-violence, another film A Night Of Prophecy (2002), explores poetry in contemporary India through multiple poetic journeys that seek to unravel history, time and the future. His works cover topics as diverse as the history and politics of collecting water in the desert, the physical and mental spaces that men and women carve out for themselves within the family, and ecological interpretations of Buddhism. Other films have dealt with the opposition between globalization and tribal consciousness in the heart of rural India. What make Kanwar’s films so compelling is the acute immediacy of their images and the perplexing, almost beguiling contours of their narratives. Kanwar’s films do not explain, they show and tell. They create a space of continuous traversing between deep personal zones and the complicated outside universe. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comic Book Reading 26th October, 5:00 pm French Cultural Center The comic book reading's debut this October is part of a collaboration between the French Cultural Center and Sarai. It is designed on similar lines to the film screening culture in Sarai, where we invite film makers to screen their works which is followed by a critical discussion about the work. Unfortunately comics in India are not as flourishing a practice as cinema is. It is therefore extremely difficult to find practitioners who, at a regular interval, come up with new works. This is the underlying idea behind having such a comic book reading event. The intention is to popularise the discourse of and about comics by inviting comic book practitioners/readers/aficionados to talk about a work that has been instrumental in moulding their understanding of the form. The readings provide the space for a much needed critical look at comic books and a common meeting ground for people who have a strong attachment to it. Formally the readings could be seen as a cross between a film screening and a book reading where segments of the work being discussed is projected on a screen and the reader/animator talks about it. This could then be evolved into a performance, an enactment or whatever the animator's imagination yields. The comic book readings will take place twice a month and the space will alternate between The French Cultural Center and Sarai. The first comic book reading is going to take place in The French Cultural Center on the 26th October at 5:00 pm. Orojit Sen (River of Stories, 1994) would be talking about the Tintin comic series. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ END OF NEWSLETTER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------