Screening of 'Up, Down and Sideways'

Toto Funds the Arts 

& 

Goethe-Institut  / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore 

are proud to present the eighth edition of

New Voices in Indian Cinema 

with a screening of the award-winning documentary

Up, Down and Sideways

directed by Anushka Meenakshi & Iswar Srikumar

Date: Saturday, 18 May 2019

Time: 6:30 p.m.

Venue: Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan 

716, CMH Road, Indiranagar 1st Stage, 

Bangalore 560 038 

About the film

Close to the India-Myanmar border is the village of Phek in Nagaland. Around 5000 people live here, almost all of whom cultivate rice for their own consumption. As they work in cooperative groups — preparing the terraced fields, planting saplings, or harvesting the grain and carrying it up impossibly steep slopes — the rice cultivators of Phek sing. The seasons change, and so does the music. Stories of love, stories of the field, stories of song, stories in song. Up, Down & Sideways is a musical portrait of a community of rice cultivators and their memories of love and loss.  It is the first feature-length film from the u-ra-mi-li project, a larger body of work that looks at the connections between music and labour. The film has been supported by India Foundation for the Arts.

About the filmmakers

Anushka Meenakshi has worked as a filmmaker, and a community video trainer. Iswar Srikumar is an actor and a lighting/sound designer for theatre. Iswar and Anushka are both members of Perch, a performance collective in Chennai comprising artists from various disciplines. In 2011, they started the u-ra-mi-li project (the song of our people), which focuses on stories about music in the everyday, through writing, photography, performance and film. A trailer of the film can be accessed on  https://youtu.be/zJsCbJfICoY 

(The filmmakers will be present for a discussion after the screening.)

What the reviewers say:

“Up Down and Sideways vividly captures the links between community, music, and food production in one of the most alluring corners of India.... Through...a shooting style that includes carefully composed long shots and lengthy takes, the filmmakers echo the rhythms of the lives of their subjects.” — Nandini Ramnath, Scroll.in

“...a musical portrait of a community of rice farmers in the village of Phek in Nagaland....The 86-minute documentary is also conversational; the camera trails the rains, the lightning, the buzz of bees and dragonflies, and the isolated raindrop on a leaf.” — Sanjana Chakraborty, Silverscreen India

Awards

— New Asian Currents Award for Excellence, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, JAPAN

— The Directors Guild of Japan Award, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, JAPAN

— Grand Jury Special Mention, India Gold, Mumbai Film Festival, INDIA

— Bala Kailasam Memorial Award for Innovative Use of Media for Social Change, Documentary Category, Chennai, INDIA

— Odisseias Musicais-Palco Internacional-Prémio Do Júri (Musical Odyssey, International Competition, Jury Prize), MUVI Lisboa, PORTUGAL

— Best Documentary, Cinema Planeta, MEXICO

— Best Documentary, German Star of India, Indian Film Festival of Stuttgart, GERMANY

— Best Documentary, International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, INDIA

— Best Film, Jecheon International Music and Film Festival, SOUTH KOREA

—  Ethnomusicology Film Award, RAI film festival, UK

— Best Documentary, Karuppu award, Independent Film Festival of Chennai, INDIA

Screening of Films on Theatre and Heritage by Ramchandra P. N.

Toto Funds the Arts

is pleased to invite you to a screening and discussion of

Films on Theatre and Heritage

by Ramchandra P.N.

Miyar House || B.V. Karanth: Baba || Rice and Rasam 

Dates: Saturday, 18 February & Sunday, 19 February 2017

Time: 5.00 p.m. on Saturday and 2.30 p.m. and 5.00 p.m. on Sunday

Venue: Venkatappa Art Gallery, Kasturba Road

Bengaluru-560 001 

Ramchandra PN is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker. A 1991 graduate of FTII, Pune, he has been making documentaries, features, short films and TV programmes. Nomads, migrant workers, refugees, ‘untouchables’ and HIV-Aids have been some of the subjects of his films. His first feature, Suddha (The Cleansing Rites), won him the Best Indian Film at the Osian Cinefan Festival of Asian Films in 2006. It also won the Hubart Bals Distribution Grant, following which he screened the film in about 100 villages in coastal Karnataka. His second feature Putaani Party (The Kid Gang) won the National Award for Best Children’s Film in 2009.

ABOUT THE FILMS 

MIYAR MANE (MIYAR HOUSE) (2011) 

The filmmaker’s 200-year-old ancestral house in a remote village of Miyar in Karnataka is dismantled, giving him an opportunity to undertake a journey into a past that he shares not only with his extended family but also with successive generations of rural Indians. A realisation of the inevitability of a transition marks this journey, which could well be the journey of a country that has propelled itself into modernity. As plans are on for the house to be reconstructed in an open-air museum, divorced from its original context, the fossilisation seems to be complete.

ANNA SAARU (RICE AND RASAM) (2012) 

The film captures the daily struggles, routines, joys, conflicts, and the nomadic lives of an ensemble of professional artists of two units of a touring theatre company in Karnataka, as they struggle to remain relevant and survive amidst dwindling audiences, and in the face of rapidly changing economic, cultural and political contexts. Asserting the unique ‘live experience’ that only his theatre can provide, and holding these two units together is Rajanna Jewargi and his extended family. Also featured is Nagesh Gubbi, who had managed the most famous theatre company in Karnataka, the Gubbi Company, that later collapsed.

B.V. KARANTH: BABA (2012) 

The film traces B.V. Karanth’s journey from the village of Babukodi in Mangalore to professional theatre in Mysore under the then famous Gubbi Company, to his musical tutelage in Varanasi and then to the national arena in New Delhi at the National School of Drama, from where he hopped onto the cultural bandwagon of Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal before returning to his roots as the head of Rangayana in Mysore. The thoughts and experiences of this man who influenced the history of modern Indian theatre have been captured in his own words in an autobiography compiled by eminent Kannada writer Vaidehi, on which the film is based.

Programme

18 February, Saturday, 5.00 p.m. 

Miyar Mané (Miyar House) (76 minutes)

Moderator - Basav Biradar

Discussants - Meera Iyer, Saparya Varma, Sundar Sarukkai, Ramchandra P.N.

19 February, Sunday, 2.30 p.m.

Anna Saaru (Rice and Rasam) (52 minutes)

Moderator - Basav Biradar

Discussants - Sreepathi Manjana Baliu, Sharada G.S., Karthik V. Gowtham,

Ramchandra P.N.

19 February, Sunday, 5.00 p.m.

B.V. Karanth: Baba (93 minutes)

Moderator - Basav Biradar 

Discussants - Laxmi Chandrashekhar, Mangala Nagaraj Rao, Sathwik N. N., Ramchandra P.N.