Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 5 : Janani's Juliet

Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 5
From 6 pm, 3 July, Friday onwards! For 48 hours only!

Film : Janani's Juliet
Dir: Pankaj Rishi Kumar; 53 min; Tamil with Eng subtitles; 2019



Synopsis: Kausalya lost her husband (Shankar), when they were attacked by her own family. They had married against their families wishes.

Deeply disturbed by a spate of honor killings in India, Indianostrum, a Pondicherry based theatre group sets out to introspect the implications of caste, class and gender. They adapt Shakespeare's ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

What emerges in the process is a critical reflection and commentary of the contemporary Indian society where love struggles to survive.



Awards / Film Festivals :

India's Official entry to the Oscar's
Best Long Documentary Prize at IDSFFK, Trivandrum, India
Best Film, Signs Film Festival, Thrissur, India
Best Film, Panchjanyam Film Festival, India

Official Selection Competition, Kolkata Film Festival, India
Official Selection Competition, FSA Kathmandu
Official Selection Competition, Auroville Film Festival, India
Official Selection Competition, South Asia Short Film Festival, India
Official Selection, Indian Film Festival of Bubhaneswar
Official Selection, Open Frame Film Festival: New Delhi, India
Official Selection, Madurai Film Festival, india
Official Selection, Kolkata People's Film Festival, India
Official Selection, Chennai Film Festival, India
Official Selection, International Theater Festival of Kerala, India



Pankaj Rishi Kumar :

After graduating from the FTII Pune, India, in 1992, with a specialisation in Film Editing, Pankaj was assistant editor on Sekhar Kapur's ‘Bandit Queen’.

After editing numerous documentaries and TV serials, he made his first film Kumar Talkies. Subsequently, Pankaj has become a one-man crew producing, directing, shooting and editing his own films under the banner of Kumar Talkies. (Pather Chujaeri, The Vote, Gharat, 3 Men and a Bulb, Punches n Ponytails, Seeds of Dissent, In God’s Land).

Since 2012 he has been actively documenting in Pondicherry (a former French colony). Two Flags, Janani's Juliet and To Die a Frenchman (in post production) are 3 films based out of Pondicherry. The films engage with the Tamil French community, its people and reflect on the historical past.

Janani's Juliet was India's official entry to Oscars. It won the best film at IDSFFK, Signs and Panchjanyam film festival.

Pankaj’s films have been screened at film festivals all over the world. Pankaj has won grants from Hubert Bals, IFA, Jan Vrijman, AND (Korea), Banff, Majlis, Sarai and Pad.ma. Pankaj was awarded an Asia Society fellowship at Harvard Asia Centre (2003). He is an alumnus of Asian Film Academy (Pusan) and Berlin Talents (2016). Pankaj is a visiting faculty at Whistling Woods International, and lectures at FTII and SRFTI. He is a regular mentor with Let’sdoc -- A DRI initiative, Kolkata. (kumartalkies.blogspot.in)

Don't forget to attend the interaction via zoom with the filmmaker on 5 July, Sunday at 11 am.
Text message to 9940642044 for ID and password for the Zoom meeting.

Click here for the film
(password : prk18dd)

Resisting Super Emergency : Online Film Festival

RESISTING SUPER EMERGENCY : DEFENDING INDIAN CONSTITUTION

Online Film Festival : Organised by MARUPAKKAM

On 25 June, Thursday from 12 am onwards; for 48 hours only

List of films:

1) Ammi
Dir : Sunil Kumar; 90 min; Hindi with Eng subtitles; 2018

Click here to watch the film

This is one woman's two-year fight for justice. Battered by the police, having been told by the myriad government agencies who investigate her son's disappearance, that there are no leads, she still stands with conviction.

2) Lynch Nation
Dir: Shaheen Ahmed & Ashfaque EJ; 43 min; Hindi with English subtitles; 2018

Click here to watch the film / password : LynchNation

A relentless journey across India listening to heart-wrenching stories of mob lynching that have torn apart families and shaken the entire nation.

3) Hora
Dir: Nachi; 24 min; Marathi, Hindi with English subtitles; 2018

 Click here to watch the film



Hora literally means a fortune teller in Marati language. It is part of a folk theatre form. Vilas Ghogre, a revolutionary poet metamorphosed the form to predict the political future of the world. Adapting that form in film’s narrative technique too we follow the life of Rupali Jadhav who is an activist singer in Kabir Kala Manch, a cultural political troupe using songs as a means of protest and revolt.

4) Campus Rising
Dir: Yousuf Saeed; 73 mins; Hindi and English with Eng subtitles; 2017

Click here to watch the film



While the students' unrest continues in many cities, this film travels to some seven Indian universities (including Jawaharlal Nehru University, Hyderabad Central University and Banaras Hindu University among others) to record what the students and some teachers have to say about how their freedom is being curtailed, and how this movement will not die until they bring some change of perception about the rights of the underprivileged.

5) Our Gauri
Dir: Deepu; 67 min; Kannada, Hindi and English (subtitles); 2017

Click here to watch the film



Gauri Lankesh was one of Karnataka's most prominent and fearless journalists. She was shot dead outside her house in Bengaluru on the night of 5th September, 2017. Gauri spoke out against communal forces in the country and represented dissent and freedom of speech.

6) We, the People
Dir: Samarth Mahajan; 28 min; Multiple Indian languages with Eng subtitles; 2017

Click here to watch the film



"We, The People" is a film about protests on Jantar Mantar Road, the erstwhile protest street in Delhi. Through the narratives of three individuals who protested indefinitely at Jantar Mantar Road, the film questions the socio-political reality of India vis a vis the ideals the nation set out with.

Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 4 : Bird Trapper or Beggar

Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 4

Film : Sikkidre Shikari, Ildidre Bhikari (Bird Trapper or Beggar!)

Dir: Vinod Raja; 79 min; Kannada and Vaagri Boli with English Subtitles

Produced by Madhu Bushan & Vinod Raja

The Hakki Pikkis are a free spirited nomadic tribe who began their wandering many generations ago in the North Western part of the Indian subcontinent. Over time they travelled through and settled in different states of the country.

As they moved, they survived through trapping birds and hunting small game in the forests and selling them in cities and towns along with lucky charms and trinkets. If the trap failed, begging was the next best bet!

Exiled from the forest, reviled by the city, their traditional ways of life outlawed the Hakki Pikkis share their stories of wit and survival in the film that emerged through a series of community conversations held when we travelled with friends from a settlement in Bannerghatta, Bangalore to other settlements across Karnataka.

Vinod Raja

Graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India-FTII with a specialisation in cinematography 1984-85 . As the director of photography, filmed many advertisement commercials, documentaries.

FILMOGRAPHY as a Director

1995 -TOLI CHINUKA or ”The fragrance of the first rain” 22 minutes Hi Band u-matic, on the indigenous water harvest systems through tanks ponds and lakes in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Premiered at the Mumbai International film festival of shorts documentaries and animation films ,MIFF -1996.

The bee,the bear and the kuruba. 16mm, 35mm print. 66 minutes, on the indigenous people protesting against the opening of a luxury resort in the core area of the Nagarahole National park, while they were being forcibly thrown out. Shown across the world in more than 35 international film festivals.

2006- 35mm Cinemascope Photographed a Hindi/Dakhni feature film titled Doosra, premiered at the International film festival of Kerala in 2007

2007- Mahua Memoirs, DV, 80 minutes . Saloo, the bard and Thirku the Baiga take us on a journey through the lives of the many tribal communities who live in the mountain tracts and forests of the Eastern Ghats. The film unfolds the life visions and struggles of the indigenous people against mining.

Won 5 awards including the silver conch at the Mumbai Interntional film festival MIFF-2008 and the top award for long form documentaries at International documentary film festival of Kerala 2008.

2008- Vanishing trails, tales of the nomads. 40 minutes. Shown at many international forums including CHOTRO 2009

2017- Sikkidre Shikari, Ildidhre Bhikari (Bird trapper or Beggar) 79 minutes.currently doing its round across India.

2018- completed four short films on climate challenges facing the Adivasis and Indigenous peasants living living on the fringes of the Rajiv Gandhi national park, Nagarahole.

DO NOT FORGET TO ATTEND THE ZOOM INTERACTION WITH THE DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER ON 21ST JUNE, SUNDAY AT 11 AM.
Contact : 994062044

Click here to watch the film!

From 19 - 21 June; 6 pm to 6 pm; available for 48 hours

Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 3 : A Place to Live

Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 3

Date: 13 -17 June (Sat - Wed)

Time : 12 am to 12 am

Window: 96 hours 

Film : A Place to Live

Dir: Sanjiv Shah; 92 min; English; 2019; Documentary 

Migration due to lack of opportunities, natural calamities, civil strife and forced displacement due to ‘development’ projects have made India a country with one of the largest homeless populations amongst all countries of the world. In spite of official estimates of 20 million in people in urban India alone not having a home, and constitutional affirmation of the right to live for all, there is no legal provision for assuring that.

The film is structured around conversations with people: their idea of a home, their struggles to find for themselves a place to live - those forced to the margins of society, as well as those within the system but unable to find/afford it. 

Presented within the larger context of the current economic and development the film argues for a multiplicity of approaches; diversity of imaginations of our villages, towns and cities; acknowledgement of the fundamental rights of people to shelter and food and a model of development that is rooted in the ecology of the land.

About Sanjiv Shah :

Studied a bit of Architecture in the mid 1970’s. Worked briefly with an organization engaged in social housing and issues related to housing rights in Kolkata.

Studied editing/filmmaking at FTII, Pune between 1977 and 1981, and has been an intermittent filmmaker working on diverse fiction and non-fiction films for the past 4 decades.

Mainly interested in exploring forms of the medium to effectively communicate and engage with issues that are socially, culturally and politically relevant.

Brief Filmography:

Worked as associate director in a Telugu Feature film, edited the Hindi feature film MIRCH MASALA, produced, edited and directed several documentaries on issues like Housing Rights, drought in the grasslands of Kutch, struggles of organized landless labourers across India, and

ecosystems of the desert of Rajasthan and the Himalayas.

Produced, directed and edited a Gujarati film HUN, HUNSHI, HUNSHILAL in 1992. The film was an attempt to look at contemporary social and political history of India around the time of the rise globalization and growing fundamentalism, which also coincided with manifest intolerance towards

alternative voices and dissent, both from the state and civil society. It was an exploration of the cinematic form to allow a more nuanced and multi-layered look at recent history.

Click here to watch the film!

DO NOT MISS THE INTERACTION WITH THE FILMMAKER 

ON 14 June, Sunday @ 11 am via ZOOM.

Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 2 : 18 Feet

Marupakkam Online Film Screening # 2

Film : 18 Feet
Dir: Renjit Kuzhur; 77 min; Malayalam with English subtitles; Documentary



Karinthalakoottam is an indigenous band that propagates the music of soul to connect people with a sense of historic resolution.

18 feet symbolizes the holy distance dalits, the downtrodden, were to ensure for the sanctity of upper castes.

P R Remesh, a city public-bus conductor, is the man behind the exuberant squad that drums empathy for all in denial of historic untouchability attached to the disused community.

The troop is the vanguard in redefining the identity of people who are battered by senseless incorrectness through centuries. The downtown Kerala band rekindles the sense of sanity for all with a massage of love and harmony.

Date : 6 - 8 June 2020
Time : 12 am to 12 am (48 hours window)

Click here to watch the film (படம் பார்க்க இங்கே சொடுக்கவும்)

Click here for a review (படம் பற்றிய விமர்சனத்திற்கு இங்கே சொடுக்கவும்)