New Voices in Indian Cinema 3

Toto Funds the Arts 

is proud to present the third edition of 

'New Voices in Indian Cinema'

with a screening and discussion of Kislay’s Hamare Ghar and Priyanka Chhabra’s A Summer Flu, both of which won the 2014 TOTO Awards for Short Films, as well as Priya Goswami’s A Pinch of Skin, which was on the shortlist

The filmmakers will be in conversation with film historian  

Ashish Rajadhyaksha

Date and Time: Saturday, 15 November 2014,   5–7 p.m.

Venue: National Gallery of Modern Art (Auditorium)

49, Palace Road, Bengaluru-560 052 (ph: 080-22342338)

(All the films are under 30 minutes long and subtitled in English)

Kislay recently completed his postgraduation from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.  Hamare Ghar is his first short film. He is a freelance film director and editor. 

Priyanka Chhabra’s filmmaking delicately balances the imagined and the real. A Summer Flu (experimental short) is her first independent production.  She recently completed another short film which explores the emotion of ‘shame’, commissioned by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust.  

Priya Goswami studied filmmaking at the National Institute of Design (NID). She has worked on film projects with FAO, United Nations, Cambodia, and is currently pursuing independent projects, non-fiction and fiction alike. 

Ashish Rajadhyaksha is a film historian. He co-edited the Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema (1999) and wrote Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency (2009). 

About the films

Hamare Ghar: Kamla works as a full-time maid in Raj and Simran’s house. Simran is affectionate and regularly showers Kamla with gifts and old clothes. The film attempts to understand a class relationship in an atmosphere of love and affection where violence is not physical but structural, part of everyday actions and words.

According to the 2014 jurors for the short films category, “Hamare Ghar uses disarming economy to indict the familiar middle class world we all inhabit. With depth and empathy, the filmmaker develops a script that comes alive with remarkable actors and a shot design that has been thought through carefully. Without using sentimentality or dramatic excess the film allows the audience to get emotionally invested in the protagonist’s story.  This film needs to be applauded for its confident and unapologetic scrutiny of our society.”  

A Summer Flu: Wrapped in long afternoon siestas or stuck in an abandoned house, lie endless pockets of time. Bright white walls carrying the shadows of pink bougainvillea overlook desolate community parks. They say, the hotter the summer, the sweeter the mangoes.

The jurors said, “A Summer Flu is a remarkable attempt to explore the simplicity and beauty of poetry on film. Without falling back on familiar tropes, the filmmaker tentatively opens windows to a unique way of looking and listening. Refreshing moments in style and form coupled with a detailed sound design makes this film special. It is always enriching to see the work of a young filmmaker who is free of the baggage of established codes of filmmaking.” 

A Pinch of Skin: A documentary that attempts to lift the silence on female genital mutilation (FGM), depicting the struggles of women and girls who have experienced FGM in India.  The film won a National Film Award of India (2013) under the ‘Special Mention’ category and has been screened at several national and international film festivals.

As the jurors said, "A Pinch of Skin is concerned with taking a gentle and sensitive approach towards the subject and the women who speak in the film, and grapples with arriving at a visual style that is able to mirror this preoccupation. The struggle to form the story and speak on a subject that is coded with notions of faith, sexuality and mutilation is important and the filmmaker negotiates this difficult terrain with honesty and sensitivity.”