9th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2021
3-7 March; multiple venues, Chennai
Indian films :
1) Sikhirini Mwsanai (Dance of the Butterfly)
Dir. Subasri Krishnan; 65 min; Bodo, Hindi and English with Eng subtitles; India ; 2019; Documentary
Sikhirni Mwsanai, literally, dance of the butterfly in Bodo, expresses the delicate almost fragile rhythms of traditional Bodo music and dance. The film traces the journey of "Sifung Harimu Afad" a cultural troupe of young adult Bodos as they rediscover those rhythms in their efforts to revive live music and dance performance in Chirang district, Assam. Using traditional musical instruments like the Kham, Serja and Sifung, the group attempts to foreground Bodo identity through disappearing cultural forms.
2) Holy Rights
Dir : Farha Khatun; 53 min; Urdu with Eng subtitles; India; 2020; Documentary
Safia, a deeply religious Muslim woman from Bhopal in Central India, driven by her belief that because of the patriarchal mindset of the interpreters of Sharia, Muslim women are denied equality and justice in the community. She joins a program that trains women as Qazis, (Muslim clerics who interpret and administer the personal law), which is traditionally a male preserve. The film documents her journey as she struggles and negotiates through hitherto uncharted territory, exploring the tensions that arise when women try to change the status quo and take control of narratives that so deeply affect their lives.
3) They are Dying
Dir : Dhananjay Bhawalekar; 28.37 min; Rajasthani, Hindi with Eng subtitles; India; 2020; Documentary
"They are dying....let us preserve them before their extinction".... a valid people's linguistic survey denotes that India boasts 780 languages, majority of which are unknown...let us conserve them through pictures and sounds...let us capture them in lenses to save dying cultures.
4) Sharamjeevi
Dir: Tarun Bhartiya; 43.50 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2020; Documentary
SHRAMJEEVI narrates the hopes and tragedies of the working class lives in Kapasehra village, one of the largest settlements of migrant workers in India.
5) Far from the Madding Crowd
Dir: Abeer Khan; 17.31 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; Documentary
It revolves around a mad-man and his life in Mumbai rains. The title is based on Thomas Hardy's novel - Far from the Madding Crowd. It's an illustration depicting that sanity is subjective. It is about people who are mad enough to live by themselves in this congested world.
6) Moti Bagh
Dir: Nirmal Chander; 59.23 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2019; India; Documentary
83 year old Vidyadutt Sharma holds the record for growing the heaviest radish in India weighing 23 kgs. He now aims to beat the world record of 31 kgs. Over the last five decades, he has built up Moti Bagh, his 5 acre farm in a small Himalayan village in northern India. Around him lie 7000 ghost villages, left to die, with no one to till the land – a chilling testimony to large scale migration by locals in search of employment in the cities.
With no manpower at their disposal, the few locals are employing Nepali labour. But there is unease because of this dependence and the growing influence of the Nepalis.
As market forces exert pressure, family dynamics are also changing. Vidyadutt’s journalist son, Tribhuvan, lives and works in Pauri, a large town 35 kms from Moti Bagh. His two children wish to chase their own dreams in the metros.
Vidyadutt Sharma, farmer, activist and poet, chronicles the changing landscape in verses of resistance. As he and Ram Singh, his Nepali farmhand, plough the fields to keep a dream called Moti Bagh alive, we wonder if it will ever return to its old glory.
7) Mod Bhaang (Ebb Tide)
Dir : Renu Savant; 60 min; Marathi with Eng subtitles; India; 2019; Documentary
Mod Bhaang is a participatory documentation of the small scale creek fishermen in Mirya village. While creating a picture of the world of fishermen it probes into and stylizes the idea of the documenting filmmaker in various ways. It has been shot in the monsoon of 2018 in the Mirya creek and records the unfolding of people’s presence and work of fishing there.
The film has a formal relation to ‘time’ – both within the narrative and while shooting it. It is the interview as an event in time, which forms the structure of the film.
Forming a continuum of my documentation in the Indian village of Mirya, Mod Bhaang (The Ebb Tide), is the second in a trilogy of films about this place. Mirya is my ancestral village on the western coast of India and lies beside the sea. Fishing is one of the main activities of livelihood here.
Shooting within Mirya as an insider-outsider and negotiating with caste, gender and cultural politics in the village as a woman filmmaker, has been the major part of my work in the past three years.
8) 21 Hours - of Toil, Travel and Trade
Dir: Sunitha C. V.; 28 min; Malayalam, English with Eng subtitles; India; 2020; Documentary
This documentary film records the life of Rajamma, a woman fish vendor in Trivandrum, Kerala, who travels daily to Thoothukudy harbour 200 km away to procure fish and sell it back in her hometown. It highlights the struggle and strength of unorganised working women, who survive because of sheer grit, in spite of overwhelming odds.
9) L for…
Dir : Bharati Kapadia; 13.13 min; English; India; 2017; Short film
Spoken Word is an oral performance art form that focuses on the aesthetics of word play, rhythm, intonation and voice inflection.
The text for ‘L FOR....’ written by Bharati Kapadia, is an oral performance piece founded on the spoken word poetry form. It engages the A FOR APPLE phonics strategy with which children are taught alphabet shapes and sounds and the recognition of objects associated with a particular alphabet.
L FOR... explores the nuances of the word LOVE by taking us on an expedition across the letters L, O, V, E. Through two performative formats, that of the text body: text animation and that of the human body: sign language performance, the different words represented by each of the four letters resonate with variegated meaning-attributes that have come to be associated with the word love within the contemporary social milieu.
L FOR... is my way of countering the present day despondency pervading our social environment and create space for joy and playfulness to reclaim their existence in our daily lives.
10) Miangsho (The Meat)
Dir : Tathagata Ghosh; 19 min; Bengali with Eng subtitles; India; 2020; Short film
Rizwan, a migrant worker has walked back all the way to his hometown from Delhi due to the nationwide lockdown as the corona virus hit India. Out of job and belonging from the religious minority, he feels cornered. His wife Fatima works as a domestic help to bring food to the plate. Due to strict measures from the police, Rizwan hides his religious identity and takes shelter for the day at Sahadev’s place, an upcoming Islamophobic politician. But things soon take a dark turn.
11) Kadachit
Dir : Suraj Shelar; 16.43 min; Marathi with Eng subtitles; India; 2019; Short film
The film features young married couple from the middle working class and their formal city life in which their love is slowly waning. Sudden circumstances bring two echoed life to certain symphony.
12) Prashna ( Question)
Dir: Santosh Ram; 23.24 min; Marathi with Eng subtitles; India; 2019; Short film
Ganga and her Husband Rajkumar work as seasonal sugar cutting Labourers on contract basis. They have to migrate from place to place for the work leaving behind their Native Village.
13) Pakheru (The One Who Flies)
Dir: Nazir Khan; 22 min; Bundeli, Hindi with Eng subtitles; India; 2019; Short film
An old man who works in a junkyard struggles with himself and the society around him to get a good night’s sleep. Their only son Ganesh (Age 10 Years ) has to accompany them because nobody is there at home to take care of him . This is a problem for Ganesh’s educational progress as he is absent every year for Three Months . How Ganga , a Third Standard educated woman overcomes the problem of Ganesh’s Education as well as finds a way of acquiring knowledge for her own Progress .
14) Stains
Dir : Rhea Mathews; 30 min; English, Malayalam, Hindi with Eng subtitles; India; 2019; Short film
Stains’ is a Short Fiction Film based on Manjula Padmanabhan’s short story of the same name.
The film revolves around a couple from diverse cultural backgrounds, who are spending a weekend with the man’s mother for Onam. During the visit, the woman starts menstruating and stains her bedsheets. Her boyfriend’s mother’s extreme reaction to the event, his failure to stand up for her and in turn expecting her to adjust, results in a fraught environment. This conflict builds through the course of the visit, as she examines her own relationship with her blood and pain; while simultaneously examining her romantic relationship.
15) GANTABYA - THE DESTINATION
Dir: Sahin Aktar; 27.36 min; Bengali with English subtitles; India; 2020; Short film
Piyali and Ajay, a lower middle-class newly married couple from Kolkata is going to meet together after two months as Piyali was in her parents' home. Ajay, a rickshaw puller, in his mid-thirties is capable of buying either Piyali's favourite cuisine 'Biriyani' or condom. This placed Ajay in a mental dilemma what he should buy.
16) Living Dreams
Dir : Ritwik Baiju; 29 min; Malayalam with Eng subtitles; India; 2019
Jeevan, a software engineer by profession suffers from Osteogenesis Imperfecta. The documentary chronicles the life of Jeevan, who resides in Bengaluru, India and his life story narrated by his parents and Jeevan himself. The film depicts and narrates the endearing story of a family who has fought all the odds to bring up a child of such a condition to be a jovial and strong person. Several stages of Jeevan’s life, from his birth to his present life is shown in nonlinear pattern.
17) Two Autumns in Wyszogród
Dir: Amit Mahanti & Ruchika Negi; 60.03 min; Polish with Eng subtitles; India; 2020
In 2015, the wreckage of a Soviet Red Army plane shot down by the Nazis at the end of World War II was excavated from a tributary of the Vistula River, near the town of Wyszogród in Poland. The Soviet origin of the plane drew a lot of attention because of Poland’s tenuous relationship with Russia (and erstwhile USSR) and the continuing debate over its communist legacy. Was the wreckage a symbol of Poland’s war-torn past that should be commemorated, or a bitter reminder of another nation’s domination and control? What did the wreckage mean for Wyszogród and why did it choose to house it?
