Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar - Screening Tour in Chennai

Screening Tour in Chennai: Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar

Coordinated by MARUPAKKAM, Periyar Self Respect Media, Panuval Book Store and Discovery Book Palace

22 Oct – 24 Oct: Screening and interactions with the filmmakers!

22 Oct: Periyar Thidal, Veppery

Session 1: 10 am to 1 pm

Kahankar: Ahankar | Story Maker: Story Taker (38 mins, 1995)

Ahankar (1996) is an attempt at bringing together a selection of the stories and paintings of the Warlis, and some of the writings about `them'. To the Warlis, a community of Adivasis (indigenous peoples), who live close to Bombay, these stories represent their `history', their world-view. All the outsiders, the Portuguese, the Marathas, the British, the `native' settlers... they all tried obliterating this history and wisdom. The work of the outsiders who wrote about `the Warli' represents this process of creating new mythologies. By bringing together these disparate discourses, this video aspires to critique these mythologies... To read between the lines, as the stories themselves do.

YCP 1997 (42 mins, 1997)

Built between 1865 and 1876, Yerwada Central Prison (YCP), Pune, is one of the oldest prisons in India, with over 2500 inmates. In this video, six poets and artists of the YCP share their work, their lives... Through their poems and musings, the film explores the modes in which they creatively cope with the pain and stigma of incarceration, in the process questioning their selfhood and the socially constructed divides between ‘us' and ‘them', between the ‘normal' and the ‘deviant'.

Saacha- the Loom (49 mins, 2001)

Saacha (2001) is about a poet, a painter and a city. The poet is Narayan Surve, and the painter Sudhir Patwardhan. The city is the city of Mumbai (a.k.a. Bombay), the birth place of the Indian textile industry and the industrial working class. Both the protagonists have been a part of the left cultural movement in the city. Weaving together poetry and paintings with accounts of the artists and memories of the city, the film explores the modes and politics of representation, the relevance of art in the contemporary social milieu, the decline of the urban working class in an age of structural adjustment, the dilemmas of the left and the trade union movement and the changing face of a huge metropolis.

Session 2: 2 pm to 5:15 pm

Identity: The Construction of Selfhood (21 mins, 1994)

Identity: The Construction of Selfhood (1994) explores the gamut of modes in which identities are produced, circulated and consumed within our culture, questioning the notion of the self as a pre-given, primordial and purposive entity. Identity is both difference and relationship; identity is enmeshed in relations of power, be they of gender, race or religion. Traversing a multi-cultural terrain inhabited by Paul Klee and the Indo-Anglian poet A.K. Ramanujan, by popular commercials and the writings of riot-affected children, Michel Foucault and Sant Kabir, the medieval Sufi poet, the video is an invitation to examine anew our praxis of identity as an eternally negotiated site of change and resistance.

Naata- The Bond (45 mins, 2003)

Naata (2003) is about Bhau Korde and Waqar Khan, two activists and friends, who have been involved in conflict resolution, working with neighbourhood peace committees in Dharavi, reputedly, the largest ‘slum’ in Asia. This film explores their work, which has included the collective production and use of visual media for ethnic amity. Naata is also about us; among other things, it is an attempt to reflect on how we relate to spaces of the other, spaces like Dharavi. It is, above all, about Mumbai, the city that encompasses Bhau, Waqar and us.

Farooq vs The State (25 mins, 2012)

'Farooq Versus The State’ (2013) deals with the controversial case of Farooq Mhapkar, one of the key persons who was wrongly accused in the Hari Masjid case, one of the most serious episodes of the Mumbai riots of 1992-93.

Do Din ka Mela (60 mins, 2009)

“Nothing in the world will last – it is but a two day fair” sings Mura Lala Fafal, drawing inspiration from the Sufi traditions of Sant Kabir and Abdul Lateef Bhita’i. He is accompanied on the Jodiya Pava (double flute) by his nephew Kanji Rana Sanjot. Kanji taught himself to play and make his own flutes after hearing the music on the radio. Mura and Kanji are Meghwals, a pastoral Dalit community that lives on the edge of the Great Rann of Kutch, in the Western Indian state of Gujarat.

Session 3: 5.45 to 8.00 pm

So Heddan So Hoddan | Like Here Like There (52 mins, 2011)

The Film is a journey into the music and everyday life of these communities, set against the backdrop of the Rann and the pastoral Banni grass lands.

A Delicate Weave (62 mins, 2017)

A Delicate Weave, set in Kachchh, Gujarat, India, traces four different musical journeys, all converging in the ways they affirm religious diversity, syncretism and love of the other. Drawing on the poetic and musical traditions of Kabir and Shah Bhitai, as well as the folk traditions of the region, these remarkable musicians and singers bear testimony to how these oral traditions of compassion are being passed down from one generation to the next. Whether it is the group of young men in Bhujodi who meet every night to sing the bhajans of Kabir, or the feisty women from Lakhpat, who quietly subvert gender roles through their music performances, or Noor Mohammad Sodha, who plays and teaches exquisite flute music, or Jiant Khan and his disciples, whose love for the Sufi poet Bhitai is expressed through the ethereal form of Waee singing—all these passionate musicians keep alive this delicate weave, committed to the project of what Naranbhai, a carpet weaver and community archivist from Bhujodi calls “breaking down the walls”; walls that have been built up through the politics of hate and intolerance that marks our times. This is the latest in the Kachchh Trilogy— the earlier ones are A Two Day Fair , 2009 (Do Din Ka Mela) and Like Here Like There , 2011 (So Heddan So Hoddan)

23 Oct, Monday: 6 pm to 8 pm at Panuval Book Store, Thiruvanmiyur

Our Family: 56 min; Tamil with English subtitles

What does it mean to cross that line which sharply divides us on the basis of gender? To free oneself of the socially constructed onus of being male? Is there life beyond a hetero-normative family? Set in Tamilnadu, India, ‘Our Family’ brings together excerpts from Nirvanam, a one person performance, by Pritham K. Chakravarthy and a family of three generations of trans-gendered female subjects.

24 Oct, Tuesday: 6 pm to 8 pm at Discovery Book Palace, K.K.Nagar

SheWrite: 54 min; Tamil with English subtitles

SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets.

Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in the small town of Thuvarankurichi. She is able to defy and transcend family proscriptions on writing to become a significant voice questioning patriarchal mores in a powerful yet gentle way.

For Kuttirevathi, a Siddha doctor and researcher based in Chennai, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates, speaking not just for herself but also for other women who are struggling to find a voice. Her anthology entitled Breasts (2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats.

The fact that a number of women poets are resisting patriarchy and exploring themes such as desire and sexuality in their creative work been virulently opposed by some Tamil film lyricists, who have gone on record with threats of death and violence. In various ways, the dominant culture has tried to threaten and rubbish the poets and their work. This has been resisted by a group of poets and other artists who have formed an organization called Anangu (Woman), which is attempting to expand the subversive creative spaces available to women writers and poets, across Tamil Nadu.

Malathy Maitri, who lives in Pondicherry, has been a Dalit and Marxist activist. She is a founder member of Anangu and militantly opposes the attacks on women writers. Her poems attempt to explore and express feminine power.

Sukirtharani, a schoolteacher in Lalapet, writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in a way that affirms feminine empowerment and a rejection of male-centred discourse. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence.

25 October : Department of Journalism and Communication, University of Madras

10 am to 1 pm

Our Family: 56 min; Tamil with English subtitles

What does it mean to cross that line which sharply divides us on the basis of gender? To free oneself of the socially constructed onus of being male? Is there life beyond a hetero-normative family? Set in Tamilnadu, India, ‘Our Family’ brings together excerpts from Nirvanam, a one person performance, by Pritham K. Chakravarthy and a family of three generations of trans-gendered female subjects.

SheWrite: 54 min; Tamil with English subtitles

SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets.

Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in the small town of Thuvarankurichi. She is able to defy and transcend family proscriptions on writing to become a significant voice questioning patriarchal mores in a powerful yet gentle way.

For Kuttirevathi, a Siddha doctor and researcher based in Chennai, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates, speaking not just for herself but also for other women who are struggling to find a voice. Her anthology entitled Breasts (2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats.

The fact that a number of women poets are resisting patriarchy and exploring themes such as desire and sexuality in their creative work been virulently opposed by some Tamil film lyricists, who have gone on record with threats of death and violence. In various ways, the dominant culture has tried to threaten and rubbish the poets and their work. This has been resisted by a group of poets and other artists who have formed an organization called Anangu (Woman), which is attempting to expand the subversive creative spaces available to women writers and poets, across Tamil Nadu.

Malathy Maitri, who lives in Pondicherry, has been a Dalit and Marxist activist. She is a founder member of Anangu and militantly opposes the attacks on women writers. Her poems attempt to explore and express feminine power.

Sukirtharani, a schoolteacher in Lalapet, writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in a way that affirms feminine empowerment and a rejection of male-centred discourse. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence.

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