Cities of Sleep
Director:
Shaunak Sen
Synopsis:
‘Cities of Sleep’ takes us into a heady world of insurgent sleeper’s communities as well as the infamous ‘sleep mafia’ in Delhi where just securing a safe sleeping spot often becomes a question of life and death for a large number of people.
Duration: 52 mins
Q2P
Director:
Paromita Vohra
Synopsis:
Who is dreaming of the global city? ‘Q2P’ peers through the dream of Mumbai as a future Shanghai and searches for public toilets in Bombay watching who has to queue to pee. As the film observes who has access to toilets and who doesn’t, we begin to see the imagination of gender that underlies the city’s shape, the constantly shifting boundaries between public and private space; we hear the silence that surrounds toilets, like the silence that surrounds inequality. The toilet becomes a riddle with many answers and some of which are questions ‘ about gender, about class, about caste and most of all about space, urban development and the twisted myth of the global metropolis.
Duration: 53 mins | Year: 2006
In a Shadowless Town
Director:
Gowri Pathwardhan
Synopsis:
The Film looks at how heritage walks in Pune seek to define the history of the city in a narrow mould, exclusive to the upper castes, while claiming to represent the city
Duration: 52 mins | Year: 2017
Flex n Faces
Director:
Shrikant B. Agawane
Synopsis:
‘Flex n Faces’ has the city as the backdrop to explore the boom of political banners printed on flex. The film inquires into the explosion of flex banners and the politics of claiming spaces, through the use of interviews, fictional and graphical sequences. In this film, the interviewees appear as ‘still faces’, like banners and dry two-dimensional banners come alive as they start becoming visual gods and dictate the visual geography of the city.
Duration: 20 mins | Year: 2009
A Bit of the Earth, A Bit of the Sky
Director:
Shashi Ghosh Gupta
Synopsis:
‘Thodi Si Zameen, Thoda Aasmaan’ is a peek into the world of street entrepreneurs, who lead their lives in the shadow of constant threat. The film takes a look at the problems faced by them in a sympathetic and quietly intimate manner. Phuphabhai is a tailor, who repairs clothes sitting under a tree, to provide a life of dignity to his family. While Mukeshbhai refurbishes sofas, struggling to keep his home (which is the road itself) fires burning. Both these individuals appear different yet share a similar tale of courage, and a persistence to survive.
Duration: 8 mins
Natak Jari Hai
Director:
Lalit Vachani
Synopsis:
What does it mean to perform socialist ‘agit-prop’ theatre in India in a globalized era of increasing intolerance and inequality? Natak Jari Hai is a documentary about JANAM (The People’s Theatre Front), the little theatre group that never stopped performing in the face of dramatic political transformation and personal tragedy. The film explores the motivations and ideals of the JANAM actors and their vision of resistance and change as they perform their ‘People’s Theatre’ in diverse parts of India. It brings to life the world of socialist theatre through the words of JANAM’s members, and through a reflective portrayal of the group’s greatest tragedy – the assassination of its convener Safdar Hashmi in 1989.
Duration: 83 mins
Erased
Director:
Neha Raheja Thakker
Synopsis:
A street child obsessed with a heroine on a film poster, grappling with his burgeoning sexuality as he stands on the precipice of impending manhood. While selling flowers on the streets of Mumbai he orchestrates encounters with a number of women in order to collect valuables that have a special significance and relationship to his paper goddess. A girl’s perfume, a woman’s ring, a look or a feel enable him to transform the paper heroine of his fantasies into sensations more tangible. His childlike innocence is slowly erased.
Duration: 9 mins | Year: 2009
Ishaare: Gestures and signs in Mumbai
Director:
Annelies Kusters
Synopsis:
“Ishaare” has a double meaning: it means “gestures” in Hindi and Marathi, but it also means “signs”, as such indicating that there cannot be made a strict distinction between them. However, whilst there seems to be overlap between gestures and sign language, they differ too, as the protagonists of the movie show and tell us. The film “Ishaare” documents how six deaf signers communicate with familiar and unfamiliar hearing shopkeepers, street vendors, customers, waiters, ticket conductors and fellow travellers in Mumbai. Reena and Pradip, who is deaf blind, go grocery shopping along local streets, in markets and in shops. Sujit, our guide throughout the movie, communicates in public transport. Mahesh is a retail businessman who sells stocks of pens to stationery shops. Komal runs an accessory shop with her husband Sanjay, where most customers are schoolgirls. Durga is the manager of a branch of Café Coffee Day, an upmarket coffee chain. When enquiring, selling, bargaining and chitchatting, these deaf and hearing people use gestures and signs, and they also lipread, mouthe, read and write in different spoken languages. In the film, they share how they experience these ways of communication.
Duration: 80 mins | Year: 2015
Grits, Guts and Going places
Director:
Sopan Muller
Synopsis:
The Film journeys into the lives of twelve remarkable people – lives fraught with challenges and achievements – to show how mobility and accessibility empowers people with disabilities. A string of inspiring stories of how human will can transcend barriers and confinements to achieve great things.
Duration: 52 mins | Year: 2012
Bol ke lab aazad hain teray
Directors:
Sania Hashmi, Mohan Kumawat
Synopsis:
This short film interviews four women, from diverse backgrounds, on their experiences of sexual harassment on the streets and the social perceptions that they encounter as women occupying and moving in public spaces.
Duration: 12 mins | Year: 2014
A Mercedes for Ashish
Director:
Ruchir Joshi
Synopsis:
A cinematic document of simultaneous degradations of human space and dignity in Delhi – images of how roads, walls, constructions-in-progress, ganda nalas, billboards – all in some way attack the human body.
Duration: 30 mins
Shadows on the Road
Director:
Srijan Nandan
Synopsis:
Through the stories of those who live and earn their livelihood on the streets of Delhi, the Film presents a different view of the city.
Duration: 51 mins | Year: 2009
Portraits of a lane
Director:
Pukar
Synopsis:
This film portrays a group of young residents of Khotachiwadi village, a heritage precinct in South Mumbai, who converse with elderly residents who have lived in the neighbourhood and witnessed its changes.
Through intergenerational exchanges of Khotachiwadi residents, we learn about the wadi’s composite cultures and transformations. This film was produced as a part of the Khotachiwadi Project under the Neighbourhood Project 2003-2004 and was funded by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region – Heritage Conservation Society.
Duration: 20 mins