From dak at sarai.net Mon Aug 4 10:40:20 2008 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:40:20 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] August- 2008 Message-ID: <48968F3C.2070104@sarai.net> *Newsletter-August 2008* *[[CONTENTS]]* *Fellowship at Sarai FLOSS Fellowship Final Presentation* ---------------------------------------------------------- *Films at Sarai- Noir Trends August- September MEMENTO *Directed by Christopher Nolan ---------------------------------------------------------- *NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN *Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen ---------------------------------------------------------- *SPELLBOUND *Directed by Alfred Hitchcock The Films will be curated by Anita Cherian --------------------------------------------------------- Dear Readers, After a brief summer break, the Sarai newsletter returns. This August we begin with the FLOSS Fellowship summary presentations. We are also reviving our Friday afternoon screenings from the third week of this month with shows of critically acclaimed films depicting the criminal underworld and cynical characters. Hope you will access the particulars announced and make yourself available for the events. Best, Mitoo Das Programme Coordinator Sarai, CSDS Email me at: mitoo at sarai.net -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Fellowship @Sarai:* *FLOSS Fellowship Final presentation* *Date: 9th and 10th of August* *Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS* The Independent FLOSS Fellowships enable programmers to research and develop different kinds of open source software-based applications. Typically, these are projects of concrete and practical value, especially for social and educational ends. They are also the kinds of projects that would not usually find support in formal, institutional or market-driven settings, either because of the intent / nature of the goal or because of the 'open' nature of the knowledge thus produced/created. The FLOSS Fellowships seek to tie software developments into existing requirements for software within the social sector, and support the writing and dissemination of well-researched technical papers in key areas of research. In 2007, Sarai had a total of nine fellowships awarded, in collaboration with the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation which funded six of the scholarships. Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF) provided support for work in the specific area of computing, and localisation in five Indian languages, namely, Assamese, Hindi, Kashmiri, Oriya, and Urdu. The summary workshop-presentation is a forum for fellows to present their work to the larger community. All are invited to take part in enriching discussions. The Sarai- CSDS FLOSS Fellows 2007: Sawood Alam, et al: Urdu localisation of GNOME, a FOSS desktop for computers. Anand Kulkarni: Localisation of guides to OpenOffice, and other software in Marathi, and Urdu. Sachin Joshi, Venkatesh Keri: Speech-to-text in Hindi, with application to other languages. Rakesh Pandit, et al: Localisation of the GNOME desktop in Kashmiri. Dr. N. M. Pattnaik, et al: Two fellowships for technical glossary in Oriya. Ravishankar Shrivastava: Hindi localisation of a FOSS computer desktop. C. S. Yogananda, and D. Shivashankar: Publishing in Indian languages using TeX, applicable to all major Indian languages. Amitakhaya Phukan: Assamese localisation of GNOME, a FOSS desktop for computers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Films @ Sarai: Noir Trends Curated by Anita Cherian * Anita Cherian teaches at the Department of English, Indraprastha College for Women. She's interested in the study of Policy and Performance, and, is working on a book length project which develops her doctoral dissertation. She has an interest in film that transcends genre, but favors work that is stylish and challenging. The films Anita has chosen for the current series combine stylistic sophistication with moral ambiguity. The three films, though separated in time are linked by their thematic concern with identity, memory, guilt, revenge/ exemplary punishment; their unforgiving dissections of character; their exploration of black comedy; and their mastery of craft. *MEMENTO, 2000 Director: Christopher Nolan Cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano Length: 113 mins Language: English Date: 22nd August, 2008 Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS Time: 4:30 pm* Memento is a psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori." It stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a former insurance fraud investigator searching for the man he believes raped and killed his wife during a burglary. Leonard suffers from anterograde amnesia, which he contracted from severe head trauma during the attack on his wife. This renders his brain unable to store new memories. To cope with his condition, he maintains a system of notes, photographs, and tattoos to record information about himself and others, including his wife's killer. He is aided in his investigation by Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), neither of whom he can trust. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, 2007 Director: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald Length: 123 mins Language: English, Spanish* *Date: 29th August, 2008 Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS Time: 4:30 pm * In rural Texas, welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss discovers the remains of several drug runners who have all killed each other in an exchange gone violently wrong. Rather than report the discovery to the police, Moss decides to simply take the two million dollars present for himself. This puts the psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, on his trail as he dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of his quarry and the money. As Moss desperately attempts to keep one step ahead, the blood from this hunt begins to flow behind him with relentlessly growing intensity as Chigurh closes in. Meanwhile, the laconic Sherrif Ed Tom Bell blithely oversees the investigation even as he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *SPELLBOUND, 1945 Director: Alfred Hitchcock Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov, Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming Length: 111 mins Language: English Date: 5th September, 2008 Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS Time: 4:30 pm* Drawing on psychoanalysis to frame a transcendent love story, Alfred Hitchcock's SPELLBOUND is a mind-bending study of just how far people might go to escape trauma or to pursue passion. The head of the Green Manors mental asylum Dr. Murchison is retiring to be replaced by Dr. Edwardes, a famous psychiatrist. Edwardes arrives and is immediately attracted to the beautiful but cold Dr. Constance Petersen. However, it soon becomes apparent that Dr. Edwardes is in fact a paranoid amnesiac impostor. He goes on the run with Constance who tries to help his condition and solve the mystery of what happened to the real Dr. Edwardes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *[[END OF NEWSLETTER]]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Thu Aug 7 16:03:04 2008 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:03:04 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] August 2008- Talk @ Sarai by Krishnendu Ray Message-ID: <489ACF60.7080907@sarai.net> *Newsletter- August 2008- Talk @ Sarai ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *You are invited to an illustrated talk by Dr. Krishnendu Ray at Sarai- CSDS. Please read on for details: *Making the Edible Legible: American Restaurants in Print, 1830-2006 * *Talk by: Dr. Krishnendu Ray Venue: Seminar Room, CSDS Date: 8th August Time: 3:30 pm* Cuisine happens when cooking leaves the kitchen, in the first instance when it escapes the domestic kitchen, and in the second instance, when it spreads onto the print media to give durability to the talk about taste. Based on detailed archival work and quantitative data this presentation seeks to measure the talk about restaurants in American newspapers from its first appearance in 1830 to the present. The restaurant kitchen is the space of mongrel borderland -- an orality of Hispanidad, Bengali, Cantonese, and Hakka -- and the dining room a pedigreed and printed Anglophone parlor with Francophile accents. This work looks at taste and toil as a dynamic, dialogic relationship between producers and consumers of commodified cuisine. Dr. Krishnendu Ray is Assistant Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University. He is the author of The Migrants' Table (Temple Univ Press, 2004), and has taught for a decade at the Culinary Institute of America. Hope you will make yourself available for the event. Best, Mitoo Das Programme Coordinator Sarai, CSDS Email me at: mitoo at sarai.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dak at sarai.net Wed Aug 20 12:56:19 2008 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:56:19 +0530 Subject: [Sarai Newsletter] Positions Available Message-ID: <48ABC71B.30603@sarai.net> *POSITIONS AVAILABLE * The Cultural and Material life of Media Piracy is a three year project carried out by the Sarai programme of the CSDS in collaboration with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. We begin with the premise that piracy is widespread in places where a media-saturated modernity meets severe inequalities of purchasing power for books, software, recordings, videos and other knowledge products. One of the key aims of this research project will be to understand this media environment as it unfolds itself in diverse contexts. The main research node is in India with comparative work in China and Pakistan. The Sarai-ALF teams of researchers work in tandem with an international project on media piracy with fellow researchers in Brazil, South Africa and Russia. The larger study is coordinated by the SSRC (New York). The project seeks to open different debates on piracy other than simply that of enforcement and criminality. Through research, we hope to generate discussions of cultural needs, community practices of sharing and circulation in societies of high inequality. We will also look at media industry approaches to piracy and enforcement strategies. In addition, there will be ethnographic and quantitative work on media use in neighbourhoods. The study of piracy offers a unique vantage point to study the media environment, through the sites of media and its movement across limits set by law, the complexity of user-bases, and the diversity of cultural delivery platforms. We are looking for bright, energetic and qualified researchers who can work in collaboration with a regional and international team. Applicants must demonstrate abilities to research and write on the subject. A familiarity with the debate on piracy and the creative commons is preferable. *Social science and Humanities applicants should have completed post graduate degrees and law students a four year programme.* *Researcher One: Delhi* The researcher will be looking at fieldwork material on media piracy in the Sarai archive, as well as conduct neighbourhood surveys slate to begin in 2009. Work will include research papers presentations and collaborative work with the team. *Researcher Two: Mumbai* The researcher will be looking at the range of piracy strategies pursued by media industries in the film and music sectors. Research will span the larger media companies as well as the smaller companies. Work will include research papers presentations and collaborative work with the team. Applicants from outside Mumbai are also welcome to apply for this position, although Mumbai based work will be significant. Remuneration will be *Rs 28000/ a month.* Interested applicants may send their *CV* and a written research sample to *researchjobs at sarai.net* by *September 20, 2008*. * Applications without a written research sample will not be entertained.* Links SSRC piracy project: http://programs.ssrc.org/ccit/ip/ Sarai, CSDS : http://www.sarai.net/research/knowledge-culture/knowledge-and-culture ALF: www.altlawforum.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: