Vikalp@Alliance screening: Forever Young, June 15

The Vikalp Archive, Mumbai presents the Bombay premiere of Ranjan Palit’s film on one man’s passion for another man’s music:

FOREVER YOUNG
(India / MiniDV / 2008 / English, Khasi / 75min.)


WHEN: Monday, JUNE 15th, 6.30 pm
WHERE: Alliance Francaise, Theosophy Hall, 40 New Marine Lines, Next to Nirmala Niketan College, Churchgate,Mumbai 400 020, Tel: 22036187

Please come and circulate this widely

ABOUT THE FILM

FOREVER YOUNG
(India / MiniDV / 2008 / English, Khasi / 75min.)

CREDITS
Direction and Writing: RANJAN PALLIT; Camera: RANU GHOSH, SETU and RANJAN PALIT, Editing: AVISHEK GHOSH; Sound: SURESH RAJAMANI

For the past decade every year in Shillong, 62-year-old hippie Lou Majaw and his band Ace of Spades has been performing a tribute concert with their rendering of Dylan songs.

The film is about this man and how his annual celebration of Dylan's music has made him into a small-town hero in the rock capital of the country.


“Forever Young can be called a cinematic version of a Dylan song, evocative and allusive, and to some extent purposefully ambiguous.”
-The Indian Express

“The film takes the audience through Majaw’s energetic gigs to his escape to Calcutta and falling in and out of love. The camera steals a few private moments — of Majaw sitting by himself, or with his wife Tina and son who he has named Christopher Dylan. …. And ends with schoolgirls dancing to Majaw’s music”
-The Telegraph

Vikalp Archive Screening: The Other Song by Saba Dewan

VIKALP, MUMBAI presents the Bombay premiere of Saba Dawan’s new film on music, sexuality, censorship and the enigmatic world of the courtesan.

“THE OTHER SONG”

WHEN: Friday, May 15th, 6.30 pm
WHERE: Alliance Francaise, Theosophy Hall, 40 New Marine Lines, Next to Nirmala Niketan College, Churchgate,Mumbai 400 020, Tel: 22036187


The filmmaker will be present for the screening.
Entrance is free and open to all. Do come and let others know!



ABOUT THE FILM

The Other Song
(120 minutes Hindi / Urdu / English / English subtitles)


In 1935 Rasoolan Bai the well known singer from Varanasi recorded for the gramaphone a thumri that she would never sing again - Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar (My breasts are wounded, don't throw flowers at me).A variation of her more famous bhairavi thumri - Lagat karejwa ma chot,
phool gendwa na maar (My heart is wounded, don't throw flowers at me), the 1935 recording, never to be repeated, faded from public memory and eventually got lost.

More than seventy years later the film undertakes a journey through Varanasi,Lucknow and Muzzafarpur in Bihar to search for the forgotten thumri.This journey opens a Pandora's box of life stories, memories, half remembered songs and histories that for long have been banished into oblivion. It brings the film face to face with the enigmatic figure of the tawaif, courtesan, bai ji and the contested terrain of her art practise and lifestyle. To understand the past and present of the tawaif the film must unravel the significant transitions that took place in late 19th
and early 20th century around the control, censorship and moral policing of female sexualities and cultural expression.


CREDITS
Directed by: Saba Dewan
Camera: Rahul Roy
Editing: Reena Mohan / Khushboo Agarwal / Mahadeb Shi / Anupama Chandra
Sound: Asheesh Pandya / Gissy Michael / Vipin Bhati
For more information: sabadewan@gmail.com
Supported by: India Foundation of the Arts and Hivos

There's a screening of Pankaj Rishi Kumar's new film at Majlis

Details below

PUNCHES and PONYTAILS (82 min. DV)

May 12, 6.30

Majlis Cultural Centre, Kalina

RSVP needed - majlisculture@gmail.com

SYNOPSIS

The film is a journey into the sweet science of boxing being practiced by two Indian women. the film unfolds with them as they wrestle with their day to day existence of being a boxer and the conflicts that surround them. While one of the boxers is comprehending and dealing with her own sexuality, the other struggles with the limitations of her own body and the need to prove that she too can box like her brother. Using cinema verite style and shot over a period of two and half years the film articualtes the boxers concerns and shares experiences and ideas about their future.

US Screening Schedule Nov 1-12

THE SCREENINGS WILL TAKE PLACE IN NEW YORK CITY, OBERLIN, CHICAGO, URBANA CHAMPAIGN AND PROVIDENCE


IN NEW YORK (3 SCREENINGS)

DATE: Nov.1
FILM: Q2P (discussion with director, moderated by Dr. Martin Roberts)
TIME: 6-8 p.m.
PLACE: The New School
66 West 12th Street, Rm. 404
Contact Person: Martin Roberts - RobertsM@newschool.edu
(Organized by The New School for General Studies Bachelor’s Program, the India-China Institute, and the South Asian Faculty Forum

DATE: Friday Nov. 2
FILMS: COSMOPOLIS:TWO TALES OF A CITY and WHERE’S SANDRA?
(reception to precede screening and discussion with director)
TIME: 6-8 p.m.
PLACE: Tamarind Art Gallery
www.tamarindart.com

DATE: Saturday Nov. 3
FILM: Q2P (discussion with director, moderated by Dr. Arvind Rajagopal)
TIME: 11 a.m.-12.15 p.m.
PLACE: Centre for Architecture
536, LaGuardia Place
CONTACT PERSON: Nicole Derise- nicole.derise@nyu.edu
(Organized by American Institute of Architects, NY, NYU Office of Campus Planning and Design, NYU's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, Department of Media, Culture and Communication, Center for Religion and Media and the Council for Media and Culture)


IN OBERLIN, OHIO
DATE: Nov. 5
FILM: Q2P
TIME: 7:30 PM
PLACE: West Lecture Hall (A162)
Science Center,
Oberlin College
Contact persons: Nayeem Mahbub- Nayeem.Manbub@oberlin.edu
Ethan Cowan: production.coordinator@oberlin.edu, 440-775-8708
(Organized by Department of Cinema Studies)

CHICAGO
DATE: Wednesday, Nov. 7
FILM: Q2P (discussion with director, moderated by Dr. William Mazzarela)
TIME:6.30 – 8.30 p.m.
PLACE: DePaul University
Levan-Room 100
2320 N.Kenmore
Contact person: Kalyani Menon- kmenon@depaul.edu
(Organised by –

URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
DATE: Nov.9
FILM: Q2P
TIME: 3 pm, Friday Nov 9
PLACE: Lucy Ellis Lounge(1080 FLB)
UIUC
Contact person: Ritu Saksena: rsaksena@uiuc.edu

PROVIDENCE
DATE: Monday November 12
FILM: Q2P
TIME: 6 PM
PLACE: Macmillan Hall 117 (Brown University, entrance on 167 Thayer Street OR on George Street between Brook and Thayer)
CONTACT: pooja_rangan@brown.edu
Organized by – The Department of Modern Culture and Media

Q2P@PLANET IN FOCUS

Sunday, October 28, 2007 - 3:00pm - Innis College Town Hall

http://www.planetinfocus.org/festival/q2p

ABOUT Q2P

Q2P
Documentary, Digital Video, 53 min., English/Hindi

CREDITS
Producer: PUKAR Director: PAROMITA VOHRA Camera: AJAY NORONHA Editing: JABEEN MERCHANT Sound: ANITA KUSHWAHA, SAMINA MISHRA Animation: SHILPA RANADE Music: TARUN SHAHANI, NIRAV GANDHI Narrator TUHINAA VOHRA

REVIEWS
http://www.boloji.com/wfs5/wfs739.htm
http://www.karmayog.org/bmc/bmc_1070.htm
http://www.mid-day.com/smd/play/2006/August/142463.htm

SYNOPSIS
Who is dreaming up the global city? Q2P peers through the dream of a futuristic Mumbai and finds…public toilets… not enough of them.

As this film observes who has to queue to pee, we begin to understand the imagination of gender that underlies the city’s shape and the constantly shifting boundaries between public and private space. We meet whimsical people with novel ideas of social change, which thrive with mixed results. We learn of small acts of survival that people in the city’s bottom half cobble together. In the Museum of Toilets, at a night concert, in a New Delhi “international toilet”, in a Bombay slum, we hear the silence that surrounds toilets and sense how similar it is to the silence that surrounds inequality. The toilet becomes a riddle with many answers and some of those answers are questions – about gender, about class, about caste and most of all about space, urban development and the twisted myth of the global metropolis.

AWARDS:
Best documentary, IFFLA, Los Angeles, 2007; Best Documentary, Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart, 2007
MUSEUM/EXHIBITION SCREENINGS: TATE MODERN GLOBAL CITIES EXHIBIT, 2007; LILLE 3000, 2006; BONN BIENNALE, 2006
FESTIVALS: Royal Anthopology Institute Film Festival, Manchester, Film Festival de Popoli, Ecovisione Film Festival, Florence, Planet in Focus, Toronto, IFFLA, Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart, 3 Screens Film Festival, ISF New Delhi,


FOR ENQUIRIES CONTACT- Paromita Vohra: parodevi@gmail.com

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