HOME AND THE WORLD

Satyajit Ray, Madhushree Dutta, Ayshia Abraham and Aparna Sen

Home and the World is a programme of Indian film, which where screened throughout the second half of August at Project. Selected by Indian curator Suman Gopinath and Project’s then curator Grant Watson, this programme presents India through the moving image as a cosmopolitan society and a meeting point for different cultures in both historical and contemporary terms. It included unique material never shown before in Europe as well as several classic films that will be presented in Ireland for the first time.

The programme is divided into three sections. The first features the highly acclaimed Indian director, Satyajit Ray, and presents a rare early work, ‘The Inner Eye‘, as well as his award-winning adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s seminal novel, ‘Home and the World‘. This story prefigures contemporary debates concerning the impact of globalisation on Indian society as well as the effects of religious and communal tensions. The films of Ray conjure up the cultural milieu of the Bengali Renaissance from the first half of the Twentieth Century, in which the leading cultural figures of the time worked towards a sense of Indian Modernism that combined indigenous traditions with influences from the West.
Focusing on present day is the work of one of India’s most respected contemporary female filmmakers Madhushree Dutta. ‘I Live in Behrampada‘ addresses the main challenge presented to the Post Independence tradition of a secular India, which is the rise of Hindu fundamentalism as a social and political force and the subsequent impact of this on Hindu Muslim relations. Then in a very different film ‘An Actor Prepares‘ Dutta examines gender roles with the portrait of a female impersonator, the actor Jaishankar Sundari, set against a backdrop of sets designed by the Indian painters Nilima Sheikh and Bhupen Khakkar.

In the third section two films depict the Anglo-Indian experience as it lived on after India gained Independence. In ‘Film Tales‘ amateur super eight film footage discovered by the Indian artist Ayshia Abraham, shows life in the British Cantonment area of Bangalore from the 1940s through to the 1970s, material which the artist edits and juxtaposes with a soundtrack. The full length feature ‘36 Chowringee Lane‘ by Arpana Sen tells the story of an English teacher, left behind in Calcutta, and her struggle to come to terms with the reality of this turbulent Indian metropolis in the 1980s.

Schedule

Inner Eye
(India. 1954. English. Colour, 30 mins)
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Aug 12/13/15/16/17 – 11am -6pm looped
Ghare – Baire (Home and the World)
(India. 1984. Bengali with English subtitles. Colour. 140 mins)
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Aug 12/13/15/16/17 – 7pm

Sundari: An actor prepares
(India. 1999. Colour. Hindi and English with subtitles. 30 mins)
Dir. Madhushree Dutta
Aug 18/19/20/22/23 – 11am -6pm looped
I Live in Behrampada
(India. 1993. Hindi and English with subtitles. Colour. 46 mins)
Dir. Madhushree Dutta
Aug 18/19/20/22/23- 7pm

Film Tales I
(India. 2005. Colour and B/W. English. 17 mins)
Dir. Ayshia Abraham
Aug 24/25/26/27 – 11am -6pm looped
36 Chowringhee Lane
(India. 1981. English. Colour. 122 mins)
Dir. Aparna Sen
Aug 24/25/26/27 – 7pm

These screenings have been selected to compliment the Visual Arts programme, and are the first element in a series of projects that examine India in relation to an elsewhere. Other programmes in this series included the realisation of Satyajit Ray’s screenplay for an unmade film, ‘The Alien‘, presented as a theatrical work by German artist Matti Braun, and a collaboration between Irish artist Heather Allen and Indian artist NS Harsha on a new co-commissioned work by Project Arts and the British Council.