South Asia Foreground

A film that explores the dilemma on what course of treatment to follow and muses on love and life through songs

The uniqueness of documentary filmmaking is the possibility of recording events unfolding along the perimeter of the subject. That's where this film was born. With tears and with the loss of a very dear friend, Wasted was conceived. Ancient agrarian India believed nothing is waste. No Indian vernacu

Two technicians set up cameras in a forest to capture animal activity at night. A woman moved away from the forest a long time ago. She yearns for her late husband and the forest.

Ambi Jiji turns jhum fields in Meghalaya into orchards, providing food security. Award winner at Delhi and screened at festivals in Kathmandu, Madurai and Mumbai. Documentary on changes in traditional farming methods of jhum fields. This film explores how Ambi Jiji always planted her crops on soil w

The Remains is a stream of consciousness progression of a hallucinatory experience of an old man in his late 70s living in an isolated river bank. The old man feels that his life is soon coming to an end and believes that he will be transformed into a gigantic fish. He wants to erase all his memorie

Something Like a War is an Indian documentary by Deepa Dhanraj made in 1991. It examines India's family planning program revolved on the gender it primarily affects: women. This documentary is a chilling examination of India's family planning program from the point of view of the women who are its p

A boat has many powers: to gather a society in its making, to distribute goods, to carry people and ideas across places that, it seems to us, are more different than ever before. The widely travelled feature-length film From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf ; a vast, undulating, and musical spatio-temporal jour

Voices from Baliapal is a film that explores the non-violent resistance by 70,000 fishermen and farmers to attempts to displace them for a missile testing range. Self-financed and shot in about five days, the film is an almost lyrical protest against the previous government's attempts to grab farmla

Indus Blues is a 2018 Pakistani documentary film produced and directed by filmmaker Jawad Sharif about the dying folk and classical musical instruments of cultures in Pakistan and the struggle of musicians and craftsmen

Shasan valo, sun lo aaj - Hamare gaon mein hamaara raaj (Listen to us, you who rule - our villages, we control). A boat carrying that cargo of defiance begins an urgent journey through the Narmada valley. For more than 15 years people of the valley have resisted a series of massive dams on their riv

The film does not deal with witchcraft as a practice. It depicts the humanitarian crisis surrounding the cases of witch hunting, taking us closer to the people who have been accused, ostracized and tortured, and the circumstances that have led to it. The film primarily engages with three cases from

City of Photos explores the little known ethos of neighborhood photo studios in Indian cities, discovering entire imaginary worlds in the smallest of spaces. Tiny, shabby studios that appear to be stuck in a time warp turn out to be places throbbing with energy. As full of surprises as the people wh

Mira, a call center worker finds herself falling for Kiran, a co-worker when her computer crashes. Mira tries to fix her computer but instead falls into a web of electronic wires, where memories, and hidden desires lead her through a confusing maze which she must escape from.

For centuries the grasslands in an otherwise arid region of North- Western Gujarat, bordering Pakistan, have been home to the Maldharis, a predominantly Muslim community of traditional cattle grazers with a rich heritage of culture, art and music. Fifty years after lndia's independence the entire pa

In 2015, I stayed and shot in my ancestral village in western coastal India, thus starting an experiment of documenting/killing 'time'.... The film is a record of this village during that time. The resulting film flows into stories of people and events happening in the village. The subject's canvass

By the coastal belts of Bangladesh, in a small village named 'Sutarkhali', RAKHI (27) lives with her man SOUMEN (32) and their son RAHUL (6). Fighting against all the odds of the woods, along with around a 100 families, they cultivate the land for generations. On May 25, 2009 when RAHUL is only 4 ye

3 Men and a Bulb is a story of 3 men who earn a livelihood from their gharat (watermill) in foothills of Himalayas (Uttaranchal), India. The life led by these 3 men is meager, having access neither to electricity nor employment that brings regular income. Farming is very arduous, as supply of water

In a version of Kolkata, India rendered unliveable by sea level rise, things take a dark turn when a family of climate change refugees are ambushed by a tiger on the flooded streets.

Two travelers in the Himalayas record their memories, dreams and fears in a recorder and a notebook as they search for a flying craft they believe can help them escape from the cycle of births.

In the face of an apparently meaningful world Balvir lives and coexists in the grand mosaic of nature like any other entity. Balvir's life is conditioned by fatigue, to the limits of absurdity. He is a poor breeder in Darjeeling. To earn a living, he carries the meat of animals to market by way of s

Rural, tribal women from the villages of Raigarh district in Chhattisgarh (India) critique the grand plan of development of the country. As mines & power plants appear and grow around them in monstrous proportions, many of these women are cheated off their land and compensation. Their relationship w

Routine Skype conversations with the parents of the child growing in her womb does not make the surrogate's condition less alienating. This often exploitative and stigmatised labour of the marginalised woman is the keystone of the rapidly expanding fertility industry. The global reach of medical tou

A photographer is fascinated by the concept of time. He captures self-portraits with a large clock, trying to frame moments. During this journey, he discovers different ambiences and landscapes, gradually facing the mystery of time and trying to touch the enigmatic moments of life.

For over five decades, 83 year old Vidyadutt Sharma has nurtured Moti Bagh, his 5 acre farm in a small Himalayan village in northern India. Around him lie 7000 ghost villages – a chilling testimony to large scale migration by locals in search of employment. As Vidyadutt Sharma chronicles the c

A failed marriage. A watchmaker. Meteorites. Time is uncomfortably relative in this Kerala town, and our hero struggles to make the perfect watch to keep up with the times.

The cane and bamboo suspension bridges that span the rivers of the Siang valley are the distinctive mark of the Adi tribe, who live amidst the forested hills of Arunachal Pradesh, in India's north-east. In the Siang valley, work in the fields is done by the end of February. The monsoon isn't due for

Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, a medieval Sufi poet, is an iconic figure whose poems are sung in Kachchh and across the border in Sindh (now in Pakistan). Umar Haji Suleiman is a self taught Sufi scholar. Mustafa Jatt sings the Bheths of Bhitai, accompanied by Usman Jatt, a truck driver, who plays one of

A person's level of aspiration is related to how good and confident he/she feels about the self-confidence. In countries like India, where society dominates and discriminates, a person's self-confidence especially that of a person with special needs invariably comes under a great threat. It is this

In a world that has grown more dynamic and uncertain, where diversity and differences make way for standardization and uniformity, the film explores the effects of a rapidly changing landscape on lives and livelihoods of the indigenous people of this region. Set in Wayanad, part of the fragile ecosy

'Jamnapaar' (Hindi or Urdu for 'Beyond the Yamuna') lurks on the river's edge seeking to explore how the inhabitants of the Yamuna relate to its degraded presence, the fragile nostalgia of its unknowable past and the horror of its unthinkable future. It is above all, an attempt to uncover new ways o

Shambhu Prasad Singh is a typical Indian "Common Man". Nobody would ever imagine him to be a "fighter". His humble tenement – the labour quarters of the erstwhile Jay Engineering Works in South Calcutta, now looks like an anachronism in the midst of 35 story high towers that are coming up all

The film shares special moments that the filmmaker experienced with his camera, a special bonding over a period of 4 years, in terms of creating cinematic imagery, relating, exploring, seeking and interpreting notions of his reality. It is a memory of a camera which perished in the Tsunami, along wi

The film is about of a Quoxotian character, so present in our folk narratives too, of an individual having to live through his follies to understand himself better. Ramesh Majila returns from the city to his small remote village in the Himalayas. Armed with irrepressible enthusiasm, he hopes to be t

Experiencing the enchanting life in the forests of Central India through the eyes of children and then there's the stark reality of the forest fires. Filmed in and around the dry-deciduous forests of Barjhai Ghat in Central India, Jaadui Jungle (Magical Forest) experiences the enchanting life in the

Time machine is a coming-of-age story about love, loss and time travel. It follows the story of Chetan, a young boy obsessed with making the world's first Time Machine. Surrounded by a loving family: his indulgent mother, strict father and annoying brother, he spends his days creating technological

The Filmmaker's journey with Uma, a certified scuba diver, exploring the underwater world and the threat to the coral reefs of the Gulf of Mannar. Born in a traditional family, inspired by the beauty of the corals, Uma learnt how to swim, dive and paint in her 50s, and has since been trying to bring

"I still remember, a strong hot wind was blowing and the temperature was touching 50 degrees. A really young boy was trying to plough a piece of land with bullocks that were almost like skeletons. The land was all rock and I couldn't imagine anything growing there. But he had this urgency in him as

The Head Hunter' is a film is about an encounter with one's own past, as the mainstream engulfs all subcultures and ethos and tries to create one world order.

Until recent years, the Santhal tribe of India did not have their own written language. Their stories and myths were preserved and passed on verbally through the generations. Each narration has a different form, much like the rocks of a nearbyhill that come in various hues. This documentary portrays

The conceptual and existential problems that the Anthropocene poses are that which are at the heart of humanistic study: life in the face of death – A video on one of the subcontinent's low–lying islands, Ghoramara, which is quickly disappearing due to erosion and sea-level rise.

Fishworkers of Idinthakarai village in southern Indian state of Tamilnadu, with an active support of nearby villages and towns, and the civil society including media, political parties, voluntary organisations, trade unions, women's groups, intellectuals, artists and activists from both within and o

Year after year, for an endless eight months, thousands of families move to a desert in India to extract salt from the burning earth. Every monsoon their salt fields are washed away, as the desert turns into sea. And still they return, striving to make the whitest salt in the world. The desert exten

An afraid Chinkara or Indian Gazelle cried for help in the deep recesses of a cold winter night in the desert. Shaitan Singh Bishnoi could not contain himself and rushed out to his rescue. Shaitan opposed the hunters but they shot him dead. His wife, Pushpa, also belongs to the Bishnoi community whe

Have you ever felt paralyzed while sleeping like someone is sitting on your chest unable to move, unable to scream. What do you do if this isn't a nightmare? If this isn't imaginary? If your fears are real.

biopiracy |ˌbʌɪəʊˈpʌɪrəsi| noun [ mass noun ] the practice of commercially exploiting naturally occurring biochemical or genetic material, especially by obtaining patents that restrict its future use, while failing to pay fair compensation to the community from which it originates. The US patent act

This film depicts the struggles of a small fishing village in North Kerala that is fighting the assault on its estuary by sand mining. The villagers are also engaged in the conservation of Olive Ridley turtles that come to their beach to nest. They make a connection between a species fast becoming e

The 'Moving Upstream: Ganga' documentary was filmed over 6 months on a 3000km walk along River Ganga in India. This documentary explores the idea of walking, people's responses to a walking traveler in this fast paced era and an evolving relationship with the natural world. Aimed at an urban audienc

HAWAMAHAL, a video on the Holy Little Box, the RADIO. A boy dressed up as "Shiva' – Bahuroopi – (the primordial DJ), a lonely housewife who substantiates her husband's absence with the radio, a Disc Jockey, a Radio Jockey (RJ), a radio play, a girl in a call center, a pub, a couple who f

.in for motion is a visual essay about the dramatic change that the world's largest democracy goes through around this millennium. Economic liberalization, and the IT revolution takes place in a country simultaneously, where the real industrial revolution never happened. The cities expand vertically

Atasi was declared mad by her family and admitted to a mental hospital. Once out of the mental hospital, she fell in love and 'plotted' her own recovery. She had a story to tell - not only a story of love in the time of madness but also that of a dysfunctional family in an odd little house in Kolkat

With an inquisitive mind and a love for science, Dharini is full of exuberance and ambition... as well as the naivet̩ of a teenager who has yet to face real loss in her life. Taking place over the 16 days of the ill-fated Columbia space shuttle mission of 2003, Dharini delves into the world of an im

An Engineered Dream follows the lives of four teenagers travelling from different corners of India to Kota, a coaching city where they cage themselves in cubicle-sized rooms in order to prepare for one of the toughest undergraduate engineering exams in the world with an acceptance rate of less than

Physicists work like miniaturists, sees what is invisible to bare eyes. The film is a meditation on blindness, the blinding light 'of thousand suns', the first visual descriptions of the atomic bomb test in Los Alamos, and thereafter in Hiroshima. Scientists, politicians, bureaucrats, soldiers and t

Lured by the chance of being the protagonist of a documentary film, Buddha Dev, a 27 year old flamboyant cricketer from Goa, starts authorising unrestricted access into the most private parts of his life. The film explores the relationship between Buddha's real and digital self… and as such,

Director Anand Patwardhan examines how the decades-long conflict between India and Pakistan propels both countries to pursue nuclear weapons. Despite seeing the traumatizing aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pakistan and India continue to develop lethal weaponry in the name

An Indian Gujarati-language musical political satire that teell the story of Hunshilal, a middle class youth who lives in the kingdom of Khojpuri ruled by the King Bhadrabhoop. Khojpuri is afflicted by a plague of mosquitoes. The symbol of the country is the tortoise. When Hunshilal grows up he beco

Bellandur kere, a polluted lake in the middle of Bangalore's IT industrial hubs, asks us to reconsider our understanding of what a lake can be. In its peripheries, the act of observation is interrupted by flying foam, noxious gases, daydreams, and questions from passers-by. Despite its spectacular t

This film takes a trip into the words, phrases, sounds, scraps, images, moments, struggles, jokes, histories that are woven into a visual fantasia of a nation, which speaks in many tongues but dreams in one. 'English' has an intimate connection with the history of the Indian sub-continent. Imposed b

Sanzgiri's father was 18 when India ousted the last remaining Portuguese colonizers from Goa in 1961. Combining 16mm with drone footage, desktop screenshots, and Skype interviews with his father, Sanzgiri utilizes various modes of seeing at a distance to question identity, the construction of memory

An old man takes his grandson to witness a solar eclipse in this gorgeously rendered view of life in a small town in India. Mr. Pathak is a retired civil engineer and lives in Taregna, a small town in India. He is worn out by life's many setbacks and is indifferent to his family – Laxmi , his

On the banks of a flowing river Jyotika and her friends are busy in their lives when one day they meet an old woman who tells them a story of a fish that spreads happiness in the world. For her friends its just a story but Jyotika is convinced about the existence of this fish and hopes to meet it so

A prompt to two ambulance drivers in Karachi to reconstruct recurring dreams catalyzes an exploration of the permeable boundaries between memory and fiction, and between trauma and its recollection. As first responders consider the aftermath of violent events, television re-enactment actors audition

Cyclotron is a film about the world's oldest functional particle accelerator and the people who keep it running today. Operational in 1936 at the University of Rochester, United States, it was built merely three years after the very first cyclotron was built by Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley. The entir

A school teacher has spent a long time of her life on the edge of a city. After a long time, she was gazing at her photo album and found photographs of different times of her life. Each photograph reminds her of distant fragmented memories and moments of her life.

The people of a a 500-year old city Bhuj, after a major earthquake in 2001, which impacted the entire district of Kutch, rebuild their lives with amazing s piritual strength and calm through the vagaries of town planning. The story is told through the life of a rickshaw driver and his wife and child

In an Indian village, about 200 km from Calcutta, various inhabitants are working diligently to produce by hand colourful and inventive toys: rattles, flutes and merry-go-rounds. Hundreds are made everyday, and the primary material used is old 35mm film reels full of Bollywood titles. The almost mon

Every night, Muneera Shaikh can be seen walking through the desolate western express highway with a bag of food gently tucked on her back. Stray dogs and cats anxiously wait for her along the footpaths and boundary walls. She feeds each one of them, talking to them, running her hand across their bac

The Immortals unveils the story of Indian cinema through the eyes of the filmmaker. The film is a personal journey travelling through time and space to unravel hidden stories and rediscover objects and images that at one time were an integral part of the lives of these artists through which their cr

A wildlife sound recordist is on the trail of an undocumented animal when she disappears in the forests of Western Ghats. The recorder and microphone become her sole companions. She relies on them to lead her way back to civilization.

A devout village leader prohibits an array of modern devices, but when his strict measures go too far, the locals rise up in popular rebellion.