I Love My India
2003 10min
A selection of seven films from a contemporary cinema, removed from Bollywood, that testifies to the richness of creativity in India. Oscillating between documentary, video art, experimental film, and animation, this compilation explores the means with which the texture of memory is incorporated within post-colonial Indian society's individual journeys as well as the national psyche; within private circles as well as public spaces. It allows for contrasting points of view regarding the country's situation and its unanswered question: when the past has yet to catch up with the present, is it a threat or an alternative to the present?
Straight 8 is an exploration of a collection of 8mm home movies of film enthusiast Tom D’aguiar, an Anglo-Indian who lived in Bangalore. Drawn from home movies made around the 1940s, we see scenes of everyday life around Tom’s house including amateur fictional thrillers shot with his friends and graceful dances of the renowned figure Ram Gopal. Instead of a nostalgic re-presentation of the past, the video creates montages of everyday personal life strung together with personal anecdotes that indicate a precision about the domesticated use of technology. Through its enigmatic grainy images, Straight 8 evokes an enticing realm of memory and imagination that governs the relations technology, creativity, and ordinary lives of people.
Self-produced working version (as part of Associate Fellowship from Sarai, CSDS, New Delhi) – as a kind of video discourse on the research topic – “The 'Plateaus and Forests' of Modern Bangla Literature: Manufacturing Urban Subjectivity by Consuming Space”. In 2009, a 20 min cut of the project got released in the international DVD label Reframe from Lowave, France, known to promote experimental film.