Filmmaker in Focus : Bernd Lützeler

6th Chennai International Documentary Short Film Festival 2018

Jointly organised by MARUPAKKAM and Goethe-Institut Chennai

Filmmaker in Focus : Bernd Lützeler 

Artist and filmmaker Bernd Lützeler lives and works between Berlin and Mumbai. In his works he explores techniques of moving image production and presentation in relation with their form and perception. Loops, found footage and jugaad (diy) technologies are an integral part of his films and expanded cinema works. His travels to Mumbai have a strong impact on his work that often looks into the aesthetics of popular Indian cinema and television within the urban context. His films have been shown at venues and festivals worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Berlinale International Film Festival, Rotterdam, San Francisco Cinematheque, Views from the Avant-Garde and many more. Bernd is an active member of the artist-run analogue filmlab LaborBerlin.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

In my films, installations and expanded cinema works I often explore the techniques of moving image production and presentation in interrelation with their form and perception. Therefore, loops, found footage and the disclosure of DIY- and analogue technologies have become an integral part of my work. I am an active member of the artist-run filmlab  LaborBerlin e.V., a space where filmmakers can process, edit and copy their own films on 8 and 16mm celluloid film. Another strong influence in my work are the aesthetics of popular Indian culture. Over the last sixteen years I have spent a significant amount of time in Mumbai where some of my projects were produced. What fascinates me, is seeing universal global themes like urban angst, mass media or migration gaining an emphasis against the backdrop of inequality and overpopulation in contemporary urban India.

1. the Voice of God 

India & Germany, 2011, 35mm, 1:1.85, 10 min

Voiceover - Harish Bhimani

If God would come down to earth and try to earn a living in Bombay, most probably he

would very soon become successful as a voice over artiste, lending his voice to thousands

of hindi movies and even more documentaries and public service films in India.

A melo-dramatic docu-drama with voice-over in stop-motion and long-time exposure.

2. Traveling with Maxim Gorkiy

Dir: Bernd Lützeler & Kolja Kunt

Germany, 2014, Super-8, 1:1.37, 11 min

As so often, also here it's rather about allusion than description. This also applies to the

persons represented. Flat silhouettes of people. Their heads depicted in profile. Faces

with no expression, formal gestures. In the background, a little bit of everyday life: 

The hard, square, stone architecture arises from ocher-colored, brownish, blackish mush of

color or mud. A demonstration of the function of the central perspective. An idealized

representation of a tropical paradise. Strangely, there's no absurdity in this.

3. Batagur Baska [by Guido Möbius]

music video, directed by Bernd Lützeler

Germany, 2016, Super-8, 1:1.37, 8 min

They gather here every day. They come from far and without purpose. They don't know

each other and they won't come to know each other. They carry their gadgets to optimize

the experience. They engage with the world through a small frame. They believe that this

moment will remain unforgotten.

4. Fictitious Force

by Philip Widmann

India & Germany, 2015, Super 16, b&w, 1:1.78, 15 min

with Tarun Katari

Cinematography - Basab Mullik

Additional Cinematography - Bernd Lützeler

Conception & Montage - Philip Widmann

A theorem from physics that describes apparent forces in circular motion when observed

from an external frame of reference lends its name to this film: Fictitious Force is a

cinematic exchange on the impossibility of sharing experiences, in black and white and

grey.

5. Camera Threat

India & Germany, 2017, 35mm & DCP, 1:1.85, 30 min

with Mansi Multani, Pushpendra Singh & Girish Pardeshi

Voiceover - Harish Bhimani & Shai Heredia

Somewhere in the rather dreary spheres of Mumbai's film industry, stuck between

star-cult, superstition and the daily gridlock, Camera Threat explores the ambivalent, and

sometimes paranoid relationship that this film city has with the moving image as such.

Seated on a casting couch, two actors are getting trapped in their impromptu

conversations on the unwanted side effects of a world that no longer bothers to tell facts

from fiction. An expanded multi-genre film within the constraints of the so-called Masala

Formula popularly known from Indian cinema,

Filmmaker in Focus : Shazia Khan

6th Chennai International Documentary Short Film Festival 2018

Jointly organised by MARUPAKKAM and Goethe-Institut Chennai

Filmmaker in Focus : Shazia Khan

Shazia khan is an award winning Indian filmmaker , with over 15 years in the field as director, cinematographer and producer, her work often draws upon her own life experience. Her internationally acclaimed and screened  films,  Caravan,(2008) Salam India(2009) and Sama Muslim Mystic Music of India(2014)  profoundly document the historical, ethnographic,  and spiritual coexistence of Muslims in the largest democracy of world, India. 

Having been born in the conflict torn state of Kashmir, she is passionate about human rights , social justice  and migration , giving a voice to the situation in Kashmir, she is working on a fiction film SnowFairies  and the distribution of a  point of view doc I Never left , which won the best pitch in Docedge Kolkatta  and has been awarded the prestigious Chicken and Egg Pictures grant and the IDFA Bertha Fund grant. She also has an upcoming doc with PSBT on women who practice the martial art of Kalaripayattu and has a web series in development  starring Pooja Kumar in USA. In her free time you would possibly find her meditating on a beach in south India or los angles.

Films:

Salam India

Dir: Shazia Khan; 60 min; English

India today is home to 16 million Muslims, the second largest population of Muslims in the world. ‘Salaam India’ documents the extra/ordinary lives of some of them.

The documentary engages some young Muslim adults, asking them a question: what is an Indian muslim?. A group of friends and a radio jockey from Delhi, a trainee cleric at Deoband in uttar pradesh, a gaffer in mumbai’s film industry, even the inimitable Sania Mirza talk about: Are they Indians? Are they muslims? Are these two different questions?

Caravan 

Dir: Shazia Khan; 60 min; English

‘Caravan’ is a documentary that explores the confluence of Islam and India, and the resultant composite cultural integral to India.

Beginning 6^th century AD, there have been several carriers of Islam to the sub-continent: Arab traders, territorial invaders, the Mughal emperors and the religious mystic Sufis. In distinct ways, these carries affected and were affected by, the manners and morals of a changing, evolving India, so giving rise to an Indo-Islamic identity, inseparable from present – day India.

SAMA

Dir: Shazia Khan; 54 min; English

SAMA is the story of Indian Islamic Music, born out of a union of Indian and Islamic traditions, more than a thousand years ago. It explores the intermingling of these, in both form and content, to become a truly magnificent sound. 

SAMA takes the journey to many breathtaking  locations across India and explores how this music organically blends to absorb cultures and flavours , yet retains its original texture.In doing so the film explores the kaleidoscope of Islamic culture in India and the contacts and conflicts of Islamic India with indigenous elements particularly those of Hinduism.

6th Chennai Int Doc & Short Film Fest 2018: Screening Schedule - Day 5, 19 April

6th Chennai Int Doc & Short Film Fest 2018

Screening Schedule - Day 5, 19 April

Guest speakers:

Arun Neduncheziyan, activist

Kombai Anwar, filmmaker

9:30 am Saints of Sin

Dir: Aniruddha Sen; 80 min; English; Documentary; India

The Saints of Sin is a lyrical journey of emotion and experiences of Seven and a Half Bengali women spread all over the globe between Nairobi to New York to New Delhi and Bombay. Built on intimate conversations recorded over three years, the film explores the lives of Debbie, Runa, Srila, Gopi, Shreya, Swati, Paro and Pradipta, where each of them acknowledges her propensity towards one of the Sins and speaks of her negotiations with it. 

11 am SD: Saroj Dutta & His Times

Dir: Kasturi Basu and Mitali Biswas; Bangla with English subtitles/ 115 mins/ 2018; Rest of India

In 1971, Saroj Dutta, communist revolutionary and poet, disappeared from the city of Kolkata. His was a copybook case of forced disappearance amidst widespread State repression on communist rebels. A secret killing that since became part of the urban folklore, a crime the State denies till date.

Using Saroj Dutta’s writings, poems, memories that inhabit spaces and sites in the present-day city, a flood of rich archival material and conversations with several active participants of the heady days of the first phase of the Naxalbari movement (1967-1972), this documentary explores how Saroj Dutta’s story - in its eventful turns and brutal execution - talks to our present.

1:00 Salaam India

Dir: Shazia Khan; 60 min; Hindi and English with Eng subtitles; Filmmaker in Focus

India today is home to 16 million Muslims, the second largest population of Muslims in the world. ‘Salaam India’ documents the extra/ordinary lives of some of them.

The documentary engages some young Muslim adults, asking them a question: what is an Indian muslim?. A group of friends and a radio jockey from Delhi, a trainee cleric at Deoband in uttar pradesh, a gaffer in mumbai’s film industry, even the inimitable Sania Mirza talk about: Are they Indians? Are they muslims? Are these two different questions?

2 :30 pm to 5 pm

Guest speakers:

Salai Basheer, activist

MD Muthukumarasamy, folklorist / writer / critic

2 :30 pm Remains of a Dream

Dir: Sanjay Maharishi; 65 min; Retro

The film moves between the past and present Cochin Jewish life through memoirs, interviews of local communities, writers and scholars and places that tell the stories of presence and absence of Jews in Kerala today.

3:45 Nostalgia for the Future

Dir: Rohan Shivkumar & Avijit Mukul Kishore; 54 min; Hindi and English with Eng subtitles; Rest of India

Nostalgia for the Future is a film on Indian Modernity, the making of the citizen and the architecture of the home. It looks at imaginations of homes across four examples of buildings made over the period of a century. These are Lakshmi Vilas Palace in Baroda, Villa Sodhaan in Ahmedabad, Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and public housing in post independence Delhi, designed by the Government of India to house refugees from Pakistan and the bureaucrats of the newly independent nation.

4:45 The Simple Day

Dir: Maria Kristoforova; 21 min; No dialogue; International

The simple day in the life of rickshaw driver in Delhi, India.

5:10 Belonging to Untouchable God 

Dir: Anuj Kumar; 26 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India

Story of Ramkali Devi, a dalit woman from Bihar who once was a bonded labourer, now an independent farmer after a long struggle for justice.

5:45 to 9 pm

Guest speakers:

Johnson Rajkumar, filmmaker

Arulmozhi, advocate

Aloor Shanavaz, activist/filmmaker

Someetharan, filmmaker 

5:45 Fireflies

Dir: Johnson Rajkumar; 6:20 min; Rest of India

In 1980s, when Manipur was inflicted with insurgency and armed violence, a group of women came out to the streets to uphold peace in the valley. Meira Paibis are loosely structured groups of women from each locality who volunteered to vigil through the night as a peace-building effort.

‘Fireflies’ takes us through the journey of these women in their struggles to protect their community from atrocities committed by the State. It explores the role of women in the conflict-ridden, male-dominated society of Manipur. Through powerful testimonies, this film looks into how gender identities are negotiated during the time of conflict and violence.

6:00 pm Protest Street

Dir: Debalin Roy, Ekta Handa, Piyush Nagpal; 24 min; Hindi/English/Bengali/Tamil with Eng subtitles; Rest of India

Protest Street is an experimental documentary critiquing the rhetoric of revolutionary activity in a democracy. It is a philosophical voyage trying to locate Jantar Mantar as a space amongst the historic spaces of revolution like Sahbag Square.

6:30 Bismaar Ghar (Withering House)

Dir: Shreyas Dasharathe; 26 min; Gujarati with Eng subtitles; Documentary

Bismaar Ghar (Withering House) is an observational piece about Maheshbhai, Tarunaben, Ganpatbhai and their house. Living in a hundred year old house for the past 20 years in the heart of Ahmedabad, they have decided to move on to a new apartment they got under the Prime Minister's Housing Scheme.

7:00 Closing Ceremony

7:30 Campus Rising 

Dir: Yousuf Saeed; 73 mins; Hindi and English with Eng subtitles; Documentary

While the students' unrest continues in many cities, this film travels to some seven Indian universities (including Jawaharlal Nehru University, Hyderabad Central University and Banaras Hindu University among others) to record what the students and some teachers have to say about how their freedom is being curtailed, and how this movement will not die until they bring some change of perception about the rights of the underprivileged.

6th Chennai Int Doc & Short Film Fest 2018: Screening Schedule - Day 4, 18 April

6th Chennai Int Doc & Short Film Fest 2018: Screening Schedule

Day 4, 18 April

10 am to 2 pm 

Guest speaker: Renu Sawant

10 am Many Months in Mirya

Dir: Renu Sawant; 3 hours 50 min; Marathi with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India

In 2015, I stayed and shot in my ancestral village in western coastal India, and the film is a record of this village during that time. The resulting film flows into stories of people and events happening in the village. The subject's canvass demanded the scale of the longer narrative form, like a novel in digital video.

2:30 to 5:30 Artists' Cinema

Guest speaker: C.S.Venkiteswaran, curator / critic /  documentary filmmaker

Films by Sahej Rahel, Nina Paley, Ashish Avikuntak, Riyas Komu, Sumedh Rajendran, Gigi Scaria, Sudharshan Shetty and Mithu Sen

Curated and Presented by C S Venkiteswaran, curator/critic

5:45 to 9 pm

Guest speakers: 

Dhamayanthi, writer

Karunaprasad, theatre director/actor

5:45 pm Sanjay Maharishi Retrospective 

Making of King Lear (Dir: Sanjay Maharishi; 50m)

The well known Uzbek theatre director Ovlyakuli Khodjakuli interprets Shakespeare's King Lear in his distinct style and brings out yet another adaptation of this fabulous play. Nature plays a big part in his narration as does memories of a peaceful childhood.

Kahinoor theatre (Dir: Sanjay Maharishi; 8min)

Kahinoor is a short film that introduces the travelling theatre of Assam, a unique form, hardly seen anywhere in its expanse and reach. About a hundred and fifty people travel in trucks, buses and cars on a predefined itinerary for a year from village to village. Assam does not have too many film halls and the travelling theatre provides for popular entertainment, just as films do in other parts of the country.

Nautanki (Dir: Sanjay Maharishi; 10 min)

This short film introduces to the viewer, a unique style of northern India called Nautanki or Swang. The film, although short, traverses three centres known as the origins of Nautanki, namely Mathura, Vrindavan and Hathras.

Grotowski Workshop (Dir: Sanjay Maharishi; 30 min)

7:30 Saints of Sin

Dir: Aniruddha Sen; 80 min; English; Documentary; India

The Saints of Sin is a lyrical journey of emotion and experiences of Seven and a Half Bengali women spread all over the globe between Nairobi to New York to New Delhi and Bombay. Built on intimate conversations recorded over three years, the film explores the lives of Debbie, Runa, Srila, Gopi, Shreya, Swati, Paro and Pradipta, where each of them acknowledges her propensity towards one of the Sins and speaks of her negotiations with it.

6th Chennai Int Doc & Short Film Fest 2018: Screening Schedule - Day 3, 17 April

6th Chennai International Documentary & Short Film Festival 2018: Screening Schedule

Jointly organised by MARUPAKKAM & Goethe-Institut Chennai

Day 3, 17 April

10 am to 1 pm 

Guest speakers :

Ujjwal Uttkarsh, filmmaker

Sanjay Maharishi, filmmaker

10 am This is like Gold Only

Dir: Ujjwal Utkarsh; 78 min; Maithili/English/Hindi; Documentary; India

Makhana farming is a specialized and painstaking process practised by farmers of the Mallah community of North Bihar. A species similar to the lotus family, the fox nut plants are cultivated in ponds and their seed of are collected from the bottom of the lake. Through an elaborate process of popping by hand on high heat we get 'makhana' in a state which can be packed and sold. Despite health risks to them, makhana cultivators continue to follow this process.

11:20 My Heritage Singing

Dir: Fatemeh Mosavi; 30 min; Persian with English subtitles; Iran

The prohibition of women singing in public after 1979 revolution in Iran is a recent and elucidative example which prevents them from singing in religious rituals. Bushehr Port, having a history of 5000 years, is the only exception as the local women strive to preserve their old traditions of singing.

11:50 Circus Theatre

Dir: Sanjay Maharishi; 50 min; India; Retrospective

In 2010 theatre director Abhilash Pillai brought a group of his students from the National School of Drama to work with circus artists in Irindjalkuda in Kerala. The film documents the challenges faced by both theatre people on one hand who have never performed in a ring and circus artists who do not know basic norms of theatre like blocking or story telling. An exciting time for all.

2 pm to 5 pm Films from Tamilnadu

Guest speakers:

Arunmozhi, filmmaker / teacher / selector

J Madhan,  C Karunakaran,  K Jayamurugan, Surya Louis, G Nathan, filmmakers

Ni Sa Ri Sa

Dir: J Madhan; 20 min; Tamil with Eng subtitles; 2017 

Affectionate siblings Kavinila and Kannan are ardent fans of A.R.Rahman. They are very possessive on their precious cassette collection. Neighbor girl Ramya and a missing cassette subsequently put their relationship upset. What could re-unite them? The cassette or the Music or a departure?

Mughugelumbu

Dir: Karunakaran C; 21:32 min; Tamil with Eng subtitles; 2016

This is a story of an aged farmer who knows only agriculture from ages. He sells off his land to pay back the debt. He migrates to the nearby town in search of a job for survival.

Slipped Reincarnation 

Dir: Jayamurugan K; 9 min; Tamil with Eng subtitles;

This is about who photographs and documents the liquor bottles thrown all over the places i.e., the roadside, streets, agri fields and Wells.

Athe Suvar

Dir: Surya Louis; 90 min; Tamil with Eng subtitles; 2018

Walls have been built all over the world to stop "others" from "encroaching" certain territories. Here in Tamilnadu people from one community build a wall to protect a temple. But their neighbours and activists oppose and protest by calling it as a "Wall of Untouchability".

5) Maasilan Aathal

Dir: G. Nathan; 22 min; Tamil with Eng subtitles; 2016 

A truck driver is filled with guilt, for he had accidentally killed a motorist/ a man/ a husband /father.

Presented by Arunmozhi, filmmaker/teacher/selector

5:30 to 9 pm 

Guest speakers:

Rohini, filmmaker / Actor

Prof V Arasu

Salma, poet

5:30 pm Echoes of the Past

Dir: Merajur Rahman Baruah ; 52 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; Documentary

Donning a new avatar every day has been a way of life for 60 years old Sikandar Abbas. He was only six-months-old when he had his first performance, as the infant Lord Krishna. A ninth-generation Behrupiya from Rajasthan, the art of impersonation is his greatest inheritance. His ancestors brought comic relief to the humdrum of day-to-day life, even in the Royal courts.

6:40 Sama

Dir: Shazia Khan; 54 min; India; Filmmaker in Focus

SAMA is the story of Indian Islamic Music, born out of a union of Indian and Islamic traditions, more than a thousand years ago. It explores the intermingling of these, in both form and content, to become a truly magnificent sound.

SAMA takes the journey to manybreathtaking locations across India and explores how this music organically blends to absorb cultures and flavours , yet retains its original texture.In doing so the film explores the kaleidoscope of Islamic culture in India and the contacts and conflicts of Islamic India with indigenous elements particularly those of Hinduism.

7:40 Jungle of Cities

Dir: Sanjay Maharishi; 40 min; Retrospective

Students, along with director Robin Das, explore this 1920s text of Bertolt Brecht to find what it means today, about 90 odd years after it was first published. A candid Robin Das talks of his influences, an Oriya director working in Hindi with students from across the country.

6th Chennai Int Doc & Short Film Fest 2018: Screening Schedule - Day 2, 16 April

6th Chennai Int Doc & Short Film Fest 2018: Screening Schedule

Day 2, 16 April

10 am to 1 pm 

Guest speakers:

Nityanand Jayaraman, activist/researcher

R R Srinivasan, filmmaker

10 am Survey Number Zero

Dir: Priya Thuvassery; 31 min; Gujarati with Eng subtitles; Documentary

Story of three women from Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat. The Salt they make and a Land which has never been surveyed

10:40 Caravan

Dir: Shazia Khan; 60 min; India; Filmmaker in Focus

‘Caravan’ is a documentary that explores the confluence of Islam and India, and the resultant composite cultural integral to India.

Beginning 6th century AD, there have been several carriers of Islam to the sub-continent: Arab traders, territorial invaders, the Mughal emperors and the religious mystic Sufis. In distinct ways, these carries affected and were affected by, the manners and morals of a changing, evolving India, so giving rise to an Indo-Islamic identity, inseparable from present – day India.

11:50 Filmmaker in Focus : Bernd Lützeler (Germany)

1. the Voice of God

India & Germany, 2011, 35mm, 1:1.85, 10 min

Voiceover - Harish Bhimani

If God would come down to earth and try to earn a living in Bombay, most probably he

would very soon become successful as a voice over artiste, lending his voice to thousands

of hindi movies and even more documentaries and public service films in India.

A melo-dramatic docu-drama with voice-over in stop-motion and long-time exposure.

2. Traveling with Maxim Gorkiy

Dir: Bernd Lützeler & Kolja Kunt

Germany, 2014, Super-8, 1:1.37, 11 min

As so often, also here it's rather about allusion than description. This also applies to the

persons represented. Flat silhouettes of people. Their heads depicted in profile. Faces

with no expression, formal gestures. In the background, a little bit of everyday life:

The hard, square, stone architecture arises from ocher-colored, brownish, blackish mush of

color or mud. A demonstration of the function of the central perspective. An idealized

representation of a tropical paradise. Strangely, there's no absurdity in this.


3. Batagur Baska [by Guido Möbius]

music video, directed by Bernd Lützeler

Germany, 2016, Super-8, 1:1.37, 8 min

They gather here every day. They come from far and without purpose. They don't know

each other and they won't come to know each other. They carry their gadgets to optimize

the experience. They engage with the world through a small frame. They believe that this

moment will remain unforgotten.


4. Fictitious Force

Dir: Philip Widmann; India & Germany, 2015, Super 16, b&w, 1:1.78, 15 min

with Tarun Katari

Cinematography - Basab Mullik

Additional Cinematography - Bernd Lützeler

Conception & Montage - Philip Widmann

A theorem from physics that describes apparent forces in circular motion when observed

from an external frame of reference lends its name to this film: Fictitious Force is a

cinematic exchange on the impossibility of sharing experiences, in black and white and

grey.

5. Camera Threat

India & Germany, 2017, 35mm & DCP, 1:1.85, 30 min

with Mansi Multani, Pushpendra Singh & Girish Pardeshi

Voiceover - Harish Bhimani & Shai Heredia

Somewhere in the rather dreary spheres of Mumbai's film industry, stuck between

star-cult, superstition and the daily gridlock, Camera Threat explores the ambivalent, and

sometimes paranoid relationship that this film city has with the moving image as such.

Seated on a casting couch, two actors are getting trapped in their impromptu

conversations on the unwanted side effects of a world that no longer bothers to tell facts

from fiction. An expanded multi-genre film within the constraints of the so-called Masala

Formula popularly known from Indian cinema,


2 pm PARADIGM NON-SHIFT

Robert Bresson ↔ Mani Kaul ↔ Amit Dutta

Curated and presented by Amrit Gangar, curator/critic


5:30 pm to 9 pm 

Guest Speakers :

Neelan Premji, filmmaker

Sadhana Subramaniam, filmmaker

Sanjay Maharishi, filmmaker

Arul Ezhilan, journalist 

Amshan Kumar, filmmaker

Arul Ezhilan, journalist 

Amshan Kumar, filmmaker


5:30 pm Amma

Dir:Neelan Premji; 36 min; Malayalam with Eng subtitles; 2016

Starting from an orthodox Namboothiri Bhrahmin background of utter poverty and high moral dictums, she gets no schooling, for schooling was a taboo for girls then. She gets married at the age of fourteen to a rich man of forty with a girl child in his first marriage. But within an year both the husband and the child die .Thus she becomes a widow at 15 with in just an year after the marriage which happened before she even didn’t come of age as a woman physically.

She remained a widow for the next 12 years. A revolutionary second marriage followed, at a time widow marriage was socially not acceptable at all and after 12 years of widowhood. This lead to social isolation and threw her back to a life of poverty too. The man who decided to be bold enough to marry this widow was Premji a social reformer as well as a leading actor, play wright and poet

(Premji won national award for the best actor in the film PIRAVI by SHAJI .N.KARUN in 1988.)

The second marriage and the struggles that followed gave her the real lessons of life , that being her university in a sense. She finally ended up as a communist, becoming the councillor of her native Municipality in 1964.

At eighty the second husband too leaves, starting a second term of widowhood. This second term has elapsed seventeen long years till date. At 97 she still stays agile and active to be a model for generations to come. The old age here of course has a stick, but no tattered cloths hang from it. For the soul of this 97 years old fighter woman still claps it’s hands and sings.

6:15 India’s Forbidden Love

Dir: Sadhana Subramaniam; 25 min; Tamil with Eng subtitles; 2018; Documentary

In March 2016, Kausalya and her husband Shankar were brutally attacked on a crowded street in southern India. Shankar, who came from a Dalit caste, died of his injuries. Kausalya survived and accused her parents of orchestrating an honour killing. In the film, she fights for justice through the courts, testifying against her parents in a trial where they face the death penalty. Kausalya’s now estranged grandparents and brother, Gautham, also await the verdict, desperately hoping Kausalya’s mother and father will be released. The unique access to both sides shows a family torn apart by a caste hierarchy that remains deeply-rooted in India's social fabric.

7:00 Highway Rest Stop

Dir: Isabelle Ingold; 80 min; Chinese, English, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish; Documentary; France; International

This film traces out the portrait of a motorway rest area located in the countryside in the North of France. It looks like a dream, filled with the whispers thoughts and the lives of those who work here, as well as those who are just passing through. It is also a very concrete place, a perfect spot to observe today’s Europe, the violence carried by the free competition of a single market, the nostalgia carried byuprooted lives, and all the solitude engendered by our modern world.

6th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2018 : Screening Schedule - Day 01, 15 April

6th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2018 - Screening Schedule

Day 01; 15 April 2018

10 am Inauguration

Guest speakers : 

Amrit Gangar, writer / film theorist / curator / historian 

Anushka Meenakshi & Iswar Srikumar, filmmakers

10:30 Up Down & Sideways

Dir: Anushka Meenakshi & Iswar Srikumar; 83 min; Chokri with Eng subtitles; Documentary; India

Up Down and Sideways’ is a musical portrait of a community of rice cultivators and their memories of love and loss, created from working together on the fields. It is the first feature film from the u-ra-mi-li project, a larger body of work that looks at the connections between music and labour.

See Trailer

12 pm Life is One

Dir: Patrick Rouxel; 56 min; 2016; France

“Life is One” is the story of three orphan sun bear cubs from Indonesia and their return to the wild. The story is told by the foster parent of these cubs who accompanied them to their independence. The viewer is placed in total immersion with the bears in the rainforest and discovers how beautiful, joyful and energetic they are. The film is a tribute to life on earth, a reminder that we are all connected and that we owe respect and compassion to those we share the planet with.

See Trailer

2 pm to 5 pm Homage to S Sukhdev 

Films by Sukhdev ; Produced by Films Division of India

Guest speakers : 

Sadanand Menon, critic/curator

Jai Sakthivel, academic

1) India 67 - An Indian Day

Dir: Sukhdev; 55 min; 1967; Color; No dialogue

Produced and directed by S. Sukhdev, this film is a cinematic perusal of the contrasts, contradictions and diversity of India. The film has no commentary, but the shots speak for themselves. Just like Indian feature films, this film also has drama and songs, but these are ‘real-life’ rather than conceived specially for this film. The film produces the same effect on the viewers as a month-long visit to India, a sense of having seen everything and a sense of having seen nothing, both at the same time. Shot almost half a century ago, the film is still relevant to the present day 21st century India.


2) Nine Months to Freedom

Dir: Sukhdev; 66 min; 1975; Color; English

When the Bangladesh pogrom began, Sukhdev was one of the very few Indian filmmakers who was in the thick of the action at considerable physical risk. The result was Nine Months to Freedom, a work of compelling power. The Bangladesh story is placed in historical perspective from the emergence of Pakistan upto the return of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to his people. The basic conflict that arose between the two wings of Pakistan - the language problem, the riots, the demands for freedom from exploitation and for self rule, the crackdown by the Pakistan Army, the exodus of refugees, the nine-month-long struggle, the genocide and the rapes and mass destruction - Sukhdev's camera shows it all.

3) And Miles to Go

Dir: Sukhdev; 14 min; 1967; B&W; English

Assisted by the voice of Zul Vellani, the film is an emphatic call to the citizens of India to be active participants in the future of the country. Made twenty years after India's independence, the film attempts to provoke through a montage of contradicting lifestyles.

4)The Vanishing Tribe

Dir: Paul Zils; 16 min

A documentary on the Todas, the origingal inhabitants of the Nilgiris, 'the Blue Mountains' of South India. The origin of the Todas is shrouded in mystery but what is interesting about them is that their traditions and elaborate ceremonies have remained unchanged ever since the days of their forefathers

Sukhdev assisted Paul Zils in this film.

5) Voice of the People

Dir: Sukhdev; 17 min; 1961; Color; English

Maker of this film, S. Sukhdev says in the beginning : "On the 16th ofApril, I read a news items that there is going to be an all Indiarailway strike. I got a little worried; we decided to take the cameraout to the people and asked them a few questions."Views from the cross-section of society are elicited on the questionwhether such a strike should take place or not.

5:30 pm to 9 pm 

Guest speakers :

Jayakrishnan Subramanian, filmmaker

Dipu, filmmaker

Bindhumalini and Vedanth, singers/artists

Nirmala Kotravai, writer/translator

Ajayan Bala, filmmaker/writer


5:30 Palai / Landscapes of Longing

Dir: Jayakrishnan Subramanian; 28 Min; Tamil with English Subtitles; 2018; India & Germany

A modern metaphoric interpretation of classical Tamil poetry and artistic depiction of the desert landscape (Palai) in the Sangam literature in a cinematic form in the context of the current socio-political issue of South-Indian Tamil migrant workers in the Middle East.

6:10 Sangam Poems - Palai Landscapes (musical performance)

Singers/artists: Bindhumalini and Vedanth)

6:40 Our Gauri

Dir: Deepu; 67 min; English 9subtitles); 2017

Gauri Lankesh was one of the Karnataka’s most prominent and fearless journalists. She was shot dead outside her house in Bengaluru on the night of 5th September, 2017. Gauri spoke out against communal forces in the country and represented dissent and freedom of speech.

The film is more than a personal tribute and follows her political journey, envisaging what she stood for and her struggle for communal harmony until her last breath. And her life story has become the history of Karnataka’s fight against right-wing communal forces.

7:50 The Ice Cream Killer

Dir: Anna Wasserwoman; 5 min; Int

Observational documentary. We may observe the usual hectic street, people crossing. The "murder" of the Ice Cream happens in front of people's eyes. We see a woman, young woman in the middle of the day who has a break and takes her time to eat the Ice Cream. This is her fight. She is a warrior. She has plaster on her feet wearing her high heels shoes. The weather is hot. The Ice Cream is melting. She is determined to win the fight and when she is done it becomes her satisfaction.

8 pm Women of Freedom

Abeer Zeibad Haddad; 57 min; Arabic with Eng subtitles; Documentary; Palestine, Israel

Women of Freedom follows the stories of women who were murdered in the name of ‘Honor Killing', in the Arab and Palestinian society. This documentary aims to unravel the social and political circumstances that lead to this troubling