[Hum_Calendar_Events] CISA event "Imagining the City: Two Films on Mumbai" on Friday, May 11

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UCLA Center for India and South Asia

 

invites you to


Imagining the City: Two Films on Mumbai


Presented by Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar, Centre for Media and
Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. 


Friday, May 11, 2007
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095


Mumbai has been represented in diverse ways in the media- a range of
representations that create a field as complex and contested as the city
itself. Every act of representation is an exercise of power and
resistance that relates to the larger relations of power, to processes
of exclusion and inclusion that underpin the city. The presentation will
explore the strategies adopted and the dilemmas faced by the filmmakers
in representing the city.


Screening: Saacha- The Loom and Naata-The Bond

SAACHA
The Loom
49 Mins., Eng., 2001
Saacha is about  a poet, a painter and a city. The poet is Narayan
Surve, and the painter Sudhir Patwardhan. The city is the city of Mumbai
(a.k.a. Bombay), the  birth place of the Indian textile industry and the
industrial working class. Both the protagonists have been a part of the
left cultural movement in the city. Weaving together poetry and
paintings and memories of the city, the film explores the modes and
politics of representation, the relevance of art in the contemporary
social milieu, the decline of the urban working class in an age of
structural adjustment, the dilemmas of the left and the trade union
movement and the changing face of a huge metropolis.
Awards:
Second Prize, New Delhi Video Forum, 2001


NAATA
The Bond
English, 2003, 45 Mins.
Friends and activists, Bhau Korde and Waqar Khan, work with neighborhood
peace committees in Dharavi, Mumbai to promote conflict resolution
through the collective production and use of visual media. Korde and
Khan are both long-time residents of Dharavi and both first-generation
migrants to the city. As Asia's largest slum, with a population of
800,000, Dharavi has often been represented as a breeding ground for
filth, vice and poverty, full of immigrants whose right to live in the
city is often questioned by vigilante citizens' groups and right-wing
politicians. However, Dharavi's long history of immigration has created
a creative, productive space which plays an important role in the
economy of the city; it is one of the major hubs of the informal sector
that produces commodities ranging from food products to leather goods
catering to a large export market.
When the deadly riots of 1992-93 tore the city and their community
apart, Korde and Khan were moved to act, working to change both the
negative perception of Dharavi and erase religious and ethnic divisions.
Naata follows these remarkable men as they work on their film, Ekta
Sandesh - their work paralleling that of Naata's own filmmakers, another
filmmaking pair who are immigrants to their city of Bombay. Traveling
with a projector and a screen, Korde and Khan show the film at their own
expense in communities savaged by distrust and prejudice. The two pairs
of filmmakers join forces in this documentary to spread their important
message even further.
Naata is the second in a series on the people and the city of Mumbai. It
is a sequel to Saacha (The Loom), 2001.


ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS


Anjali Monteiro is Professor, and K.P. Jayasankar is Professor and
Chair, Centre for Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai.  Monteiro has a Masters degree in Economics and a
Ph.D. in Sociology. Jayasankar has an M.A. in German language and a
Ph.D. in Humanities and Social Sciences. Both of them are involved in
media production, teaching and research. Their work has been screened
extensively at film festivals all over the world and they have won
thirteen national and international awards for their films. These
include the Prix Futura Berlin 1995 Asia Prize for Identity- The
Construction of Selfhood, a Special Mention of the Jury at MIFF `96 for
Kahankar: Ahankar, the Certificate of Merit at MIFF `98 and Best
Innovation, Astra Film Festival 1998, Sibiu, Romania for YCP 1997 and
the Best documentary award at the IV Three Continents International
Festival of Documentaries 2005, Venezuela, for SheWrite.


They have several papers in the area of media and cultural studies and
have contributed to scholarly journals such as Cultural Studies. They
are both recipients of the Howard Thomas Memorial Fellowship in Media
Studies, and have been attached to Goldsmith's College, London and the
University of Western Sydney. Monteiro has been awarded a Fulbright
visiting lecturer fellowship for 2006-07 and is attached to the Center
for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley. They also
serve as visiting faculty to several leading media and design
institutions across India. They are both actively involved in 'Vikalp'
and 'Films for Freedom', which are collectives of documentary filmmakers
campaigning for freedom of expression. They are also associated with
various media and voluntary organisations.

                                                              

UCLA Center for India and South Asia

11387 Bunche hall

Box 148703

Los Angeles, California 90095-1487

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