*** Notice: For the protection of property rights, this catalog is available for online browsing only. Please drop us a line if you would like to receive a copiable version of this catalog. Thank You!
Destination Art travels to Mumbai, the fastest moving, most affluent and industrialized city in India. We take a look at its ever changing landscape through the eyes of two very different artists, Hema Upadhyay and Sudhir Patwardhan.
Terrified that his favorite food, hamburgers, will kill him, filmmaker Anand Ramayya embarks on a journey that reveals shocking connections between the mad cow crisis, the farm crisis, and the global food crisis. He realizes the contradiction between the cow that provides his favorite meal and is the livelihood of his Canadian in-laws who are small farmers, and the cow that is a god of his Hindu ancestors. With a sense of humor and curiosity, Ramayya travels back to India to learn about the modern mad cow and the ancient sacred cow, hoping that the stories he hears will reveal a solution to his fear of food. Ironically, India today is also home to a burgeoning meat export industry that threatens to destroy an agricultural economy centered around the feeding of the sacred cow, and critical to the livelihood of 65% of India's population.
Globalization emerges as a recurring theme, connecting the food we eat to the environmental, cultural, economic and health crises we are currently facing. Included are interviews with activists Dr. Vandana Shiva and Maneka Gandhi; author Dr. Murray Waldman (Dying for a Hamburger: Modern Meat Processing and Alzheimer's Disease) ; and Swami Agnivesh, a social activist best known for his work against bonded labor in India. This film will fascinate both academic and general audiences.
Tanko Bole Chhe (The Stitches Speak) is an animated documentary which celebrates the art and passion of the Kutch artisans associated with Kala Raksha. The film traces multiple journeys made by the participants towards defining their identities and towards forming the Kala Raksha Trust and the School for Design.
The film uses their narrative art of applique and embroideries through which they articulate their responses to life, and events as traumatic as the earthquake and as joyful as flying a kite. Through conversations and memories four voices share their involvement in the evolution of a craft tradition.
Awards
Ledo Matteoli Award for Best Immigration Story, Humboldt Film Festival, 2011
Stellar Selections Animation Award, Black Maria Film & Video Festival, 2011
In India water has a deep spiritual and functional significance. The Rising Wave explores both these aspects; worshipped as a sacred common while also being essential for generating livelihood.
The film eloquently presents a culture built on water being shared, used and managed in ways unchanged for centuries. Richly filmed in three different states of India, The Rising Wave uncovers groups that have been dependant on their local natural water resource for generations as they fish and farm for livelihood.
In the rapidly transforming economy of India, corporations now lay claim to control and determine access to this natural resource. A contrasting picture emerges; a contrast between the two divergent views of water; water as a billion dollar industry against water as a sacred natural gift for all humankind. This spells conflict for the future.
The Last Rites of the Honourable Mr. Rai is a film about the cremation of a longtime resident of the holy city of Varanasi. This film, made at the request of the Rai family, is possibly the most detailed and respectful study of the Hindu rites of cremation on the sacred banks of the river Ganga at the historic Harish Chandra Ghat. With no invasive narration but with inter-titles and subtitles the film enables the viewer to see, hear and experience all that is said by the mourners, the funerary priest and cremation ground specialists, as they carry out this final rite of passage for a Hindu. To underscore that death is as much a part of everyday life, the film begins and ends with the experience of everyday life on the famous ghats of Varanasi and shows the interaction of people with their gods, animals and the sacred river itself.
Award
Special Jury Award, XVII International Festival of Ethnological Film, Belgrade, Serbia, 2008
This narrated DVD explores the sacred music, dance and rituals of devidasis and devidasas, women and men dedicated to the goddess Renuka/Yellamma. Worshipped by millions of devotees in the border regions of southern Maharashtra, northern Karnataka, and adjacent areas of India, this fertility goddess is best known through media representations and social activism protesting practices linked to sexuality and prostitution. Her musical and social traditions have parallels in the devadasi (women dedicated to male deities) system in Tamilnadu before its reform and classicization in the early twentieth century.
The DVD attempts to balance the typically negative representations of the tradition, which tend to focus on controversial practices and to exclude the unique musical forms essential to the worship of the goddess Renuka/Yellamma. "Fictive documentary" techniques employed include the autobiographical voice of the Goddess, who reflects on elements of her own varied histories and some of the practices of her followers, and the voice of her son Parasuram. Virtuosic performances by women and men practitioners (jogtas and jogappas, including transgenders) are featured in ensembles including the chaundke, a one-stringed variable-tension 'plucked drum' believed to have first been fashioned by Parasuram from a demon's skull. These musical ritualists are necessary for calendrical festivals shown in the video such as pilgrimage during Rande Purnima ("Widows' Full Moon"), when the goddess and her devidasis are temporarily widowed, processions in the "Baby-Dropping Ritual", and for biweekly mendicancy rounds and oracle rituals. Police threats to confiscate musical instruments, and protest songs sung within the tradition against the dedication of children, attest to contemporary conflicts surrounding the goddess and her music, the endangerment of her chaundke, and the human rights issues at stake.
The Patuas, or "Chitrakers," are a nomadic people who live in the small village of Noya, Midnapore, in India. Though originally Muslim, they now consider themselves neither Muslim or Hindu. Instead, they are more clearly defined by their art. They practice a form of painting called "pat" - richly colored storyboards on scrolls that reflect the ancient myths of their Indian culture. This art form is transmitted from generation to generation - the subjects and styles of the paintings simply changing over the years, encompassing what is culturally appealing at the time. Myths are now being replaced by news stories and social subjects, such as domestic abuse and environmental issues. While keeping religious and folk myths alive, the pats have taken on a new purpose: to raise social awareness.
They perform the musical narratives that accompany the pats for small neighborhood audiences or city folk. These performances and their sales of paintings to tourists allows them to earn a meager living and carry on their work. Gone To Pat shows in detail the Patuas praciticing their art: mixing the paint colors, drawing outlines of the images, and filling the images with "vibrant, bold colors" that are made from only natural materials. As beautiful and colorful as the art it depicts, this film transports the viewer to a picturesque, idyllic region of India, which has an almost mythological quality in itself. Of interest to Asian Studies, the Anthropology of Art, Cultural Change, Anthropology of Religion, Psychology.
Festivals
Heard Museum Film Festival, Arizona, 2005
10th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film, London, 2005
For generations, Patua (Chitrakar) communities of West Bengal, India have been painters and singers of stories depicted in scrolls. The Patuas tell the stories of Muslim saints (pirs and fakirs) as well as Hindu Gods and Goddesses, and offer devotion to saints at Muslim shrines. In the past they used to wander from village to village, receiving rice, vegetables and coins for their recital. They would unroll a scroll, a frame at a time, and sing their own compositions. But competition from other media eroded this way of life and now the Patuas are trying to adapt to changing conditions.
In response to this cultural crisis and as a means to make extra money, recently a group of women from Naya village near Calcutta formed a scroll painters' collaborative. The film follows their daily lives as they paint, sing, cook, tend to their children and meet with the cooperative. They discuss the problems and rewards of practicing their art, and speak freely about the social, religious, and political changes in the village and the world beyond. Their wisdom, artistry, and good humor amidst many difficulties illuminate the lives around them.
Scrolls cover a variety of themes: mythological and religious, social and especially women's issues, contemporary local and world news. The more recent themes are communal (Hindu Muslim) harmony, Joy Bangla (the birth of Bangladesh as a country), the battle of Kargil (Kashmir conflict), and the September 11 events in New York. Women painters have also developed the figure of Satya Pir (revered by Muslim and Hindu alike) demonstrating how two communities can live in religious harmony despite mounting tensions in the rest of the country.
The women candidly discuss issues of Islam and birth control, victimization of women, female education, poverty and work, religious tolerance and intolerance, and depict some of these ideas in the scrolls themselves. Women painters want to tell their own stories in songs and pictures, illustrating their lives of hardship and endurance. These stories attest to what it means to be a woman in Bengal and India today, demonstrating how a small group of determined women can empower themselves by adapting an ancient art to new conditions.
Review
"Highly Recommended."- Educational Media Reviews Online
Festivals
Athens International Film & Video Festival, Ohio, 2006
Society for Visual Anthropology/American Anthropological Association Conference, San Jose, California, 2006
forumdoc.bh.2006, Documentary and Ethnographic Film Festival, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2006
This documentary maps the evolution of the ancient ethnic dance form of Chhau - an athletic dance of India done by men in masks - from an anthropological and sociological perspective. In addition to following the details of the entire 'behind-the-scenes' artistry, the film also interviews one of the Ustad dancers (leader of the Chhau group) and observes the artists and performers in rehearsal and during the heated discussions which follow.
An intense level of artistry and performance is required of artists who work on the masks as well as the people who perform the dance. They each work independently then collaborate to form the dance form of Chhau that still, to this day vibrates the culture of Purulia, the town of its origin. Since it is only performed by men due to the physical fitness required to carry off the difficult steps, they enact the women's roles as well. The dance is structured in the form of a competition between two teams. Each team tells the same story in turns, carrying the competition through the night into the wee hours of the morning. At sunrise, the team most popular with the audience is marked as the winning team.
The children are taught and disciplined in the art of Chhau from a very young age, not as an occupation, but as an intrinsic part of their very being. Due to years of ethnic tradition, Chhau dancers are simply born into the Chhau Society, and from birth are taught to accept their vocation of dance as an unquestionable given. Every single part of their lives reflects in their art, since dance for them is not just a means of existence, it is the meaning of their life.
In the face of this tradition, they are very poorly equipped to survive by any other means; thus, they attempt to adapt to cultural change by replacing their ethnic instruments with modern day keyboards and substituting their old mythological stories into modern day events, such as "Bin Laden's Downfall" and "The Kargil War." Due to the onslaught of cinema and Bollywood in the villages, Chhau's value as a performing art and mode of entertainment has decreased greatly. Villagers can now simply watch the performances on television with added special effects. This documentary endeavors to raise awareness and contribute to the survival of this struggling art form.
India is an ancient land of devotion, ritual, and tradition - but it is also in the throes of becoming the modern world's largest consumer economy. This program looks at both broad areas of progress (education, health care, information technology, urbanization) and concerns (illiteracy, poverty, the caste system, urban sprawl, damage to natural resources) and specific examples of each. With its 8000 year old culture, this most densely populated of major countries is home to 1 billion people in the world's largest democracy; it must feed a population three times that of the US on one third of the amount of land. Dominated by Britain for two centuries, under Gandhi's leadership it attained its freedom in 1947. Unable then to feed itself, without industry and plagued by the caste system, India has since gone from poverty to prosperity, experienced a "green revolution," and become a major player in information technology. INDIA IN TRANSITION explores the growth and the struggles of a modern giant
By Matthew Kelley, Peter Du Cane and Samantha Kelley
Fathima Burnad is fighting to change a social structure that has existed for 3,000 years. The caste system in India has created apartheid-like discrimination. Although child labor is common and women have few rights, worst off are the 160 million people in the landless, lowest caste -- the Dalits or "untouchables. They live without access to basic necessities and are often targets of violence. Fathima's aim is to empower these people -- her people -- by encouraging them to take action through grass-roots organizations and rallying the support of international communities behind her cause.
Review
"The film illustrates the core issues of caste and gender discrimination and the significance and desperate need for grassroots type social work against deep-rooted social problems. Recommended." - Triveni Kuch, Rutgers University Libraries for Educational Media Reviews Online
Notes
National Women's Studies Association, 2004
Hollywood Film Festival, 2003
Global Visions Film Festival, 2003
DVD (With Study Guide) / 2003 / (College, Adult) / 26 minutes
Of Bards and Beggars documents in detail, a musical ritual called Pabuji Jaagran, an all night epic recitation by Indian Rajasthani folk musicians. This story centers around a folk deity called Pabujib, a protector of livestock. The Pabuji legend is widely popular in Western Rajasthan among a shepherd community from the Rebari (Raika) caste. An oral tradition passed from generation to generation by word of mouth, the entire Pabuji epic would take 36 hours to recite. In the theatrical version, a performer known as the Bhopa performs a duet with his wife, the Bhopi. The oral recital consists of multiple stanzas which are also illustrated on a giant painting behind the performers. Along with singing the stanzas, the Bhopa plays a stringed instrument, the Ravanhatha. The performance starts at dusk and lasts for twelve hours. At dawn, the Bhopi and the Bhopa sing the final prayer.
The film not only captures the first documentation on DVD of an authentic, unstaged Pabujib jaagran in its natural setting, it also seeks to examine the issues of commodification of folk culture and the resulting loss of meaning for the traditional followers of Pabuji. A poor community no longer held in great esteem, the Pabuji musicians now perform in the new milieu of India's hospitality and tourism industry. Signaling their rapidly-vanishing folk culture, they must play to an audience largely ignorant of the meaning or origins of the entertainment.
This is the first documentation on video of an authentic, unstaged, Pabujib jaagran in it's natural setting.
Festivals
Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, San Diego, California, 2004
UCLA Vitas Film and Folklore Festival, 2004
Society for Visual Anthropology/American Anthropological Association Conference, San Francisco, 2004
Westerners have always been averse to the idea of arranged marriages, holding up the "love match" as the ideal. In this film, a young, divorced European explores attitudes among the educated Indian couples of her acquaintance, asking them how they met and married their spouses. What emerges is an engaging portrait of young marrieds who have striven for personal happiness within a social system which would seem to negate these considerations.
In India marriages are a family matter; the best interests of the family often govern the arrangements. Romance is not usually a consideration, nor are the feelings of the couple. We are taken to a marriage bureau, where earnest parents look over the qualifications of potential mates for their children; education, caste, religion, profession, physical attributes all figure in the equation.
Marriages can be used to improve the social standing of the family. A rich, but low caste father has found a high-borne groom of shady reputation for his daughter and showers him with jewels. The bride accepts her fate and sadly drives off with her new husband after an opulent wedding.
In our society where so many marriages fail and so many young people find it challenging to find a suitable mate, a glimpse into another world is both fascinating and ironic.
Review
"Recommended...intimate and emotional..." Kim Davies, Milne Library, SUNY College of Geneseo, EMRO
Five years ago in Bombay, Dr. Madan Kataria decided to find out whether or not "laughter is the best medicine." He gathered together a group of patients and neighbors to meet daily to laugh. After a time, Dr. Kataria found that the participants experienced improved health and decreased levels of stress. Thus was born across India the phenomenon of laughing clubs. Since then, clubs have spread to Europe and to the United States.
In this film, award-winning director Mira Nair has created a compassionate, sometimes ironic portrait of a number of "serious laughers" who meet daily in these clubs in pursuit of happiness.
Review
"Recommended. A refreshing look at yet another way to improve health and happiness. Definitely worth watching." - Sheryl Siebert, Resource Center, Miner1s Library, Illinois State University, EMRO
This colorful production documents an ancient storytelling tradition which is still ongoing in northwestern India. It tells the epic of Lord Pabuji whose exploits have been recounted for over six hundred years in the princely state of Rajasthan.
The storyteller or Bhopo stands in front of an immense, brilliantly painted cloth called a pard, containing all the characters and events of the legend. He plays on his homemade fiddle, dances, and chants episodes of the epic to his village audience. The performance invokes the power of Pabuji, patron saint of camel herders, to cure illness or benefit a new enterprise for members of the audience.
Using impressionistic animation techniques combined with footage of actual performances, the video brings to the viewer episodes in Pabuji's charmed life and of the everyday life of the Rebaris of Rajasthan.
Tales of Pabuji is a collaboration of filmmakers, folklorists and artists who have studied, worked and traveled in India extensively. It will enrich high school and college level courses in Asian Studies, Social Studies, Folklore, Anthropology, and Art History. It raises questions for discussion of the impact of modern communications technology on time-honored storytelling customs.
Reviews
"The bhopo and his painted mural spring to life ... deftly weaves traditional storytelling with state-of-the-art video." - Linden E Chuben, Asia Society
"An audience of 75 sat enthralled by "Tales of Pabuji" at our library symposium on myths." - Elaine McIlroy, Director, Wellfleet, MA., Library
Note
Association for Asian Studies, 1998
DVD (With Study Guide) / 1997 / (High School, College, Adult) / 32 minutes
By Lina Fruzzetti, Alfred Guzzetti, Ned Johnston & Akos Ostor
Made by a team of distinguished filmmakers/anthropologists, Seed and Earth is a film about everyday life in rural West Bengal, India. It follows the daily schedule of the families of two brothers who live side by side and cooperate in many daily activities. We see how gender and age determine work, ritual and leisure activities.
Janta is a prosperous, multicaste village that derives its livelihood from agriculture. Rice, the main crop, is cultivated in small plots. The working day starts early with men ploughing and women beginning preparations for cooking. The ritual cycle of the village moves from brief daily prayers to big village-wide celebrations lasting several days. Seasonal worship of the gods and numerous life cycle rituals complete the sacred year. Eating, washing, gossiping, visiting - the fabric of daily life is captured eloquently on film with no intrusive narration.
Awards
Honorable Mention, Society of Visual Anthropology Film and Video Festival, Washington, 1995
award of merit, Sinking Creek Film and Video Festival, 1996
Director's Choice, Black Maria Film Festival, 1996
Prix Planet Cable, Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Paris, 1996
Best of Festival, Windy City International Documentary film Festival, Chicago, 1996
Finalist, National Short Film and Video Competition, USA Film Festival, Dallas, 1996
Bronze Apple Award, National Educational Media Network Competition, 1996
"Whose Paintings?" takes an ethnographic approach to recording an encounter between Alwin Belak, a Russian-Jewish-American collector of Rajput miniature paintings from India of the 16th-19th century, and Jayasinhji Jhala a Rajput Visual Anthropologist from India teaching at Temple University in Philadelphia. Part confrontation and part collaboration, the event of viewing these paintings in an affluent Philadelphia apartment demonstrates the different points of view used by the two protagonists to engage with these cultural treasures. The emphasis of the art collector and the native ethnographer compliment and speak past each other. This dynamic, while providing particular information and insight about the subjects of art collecting, Rajput aesthetics, history, social custom and culture, suggest by the silent refrain generated by the discourse, inquiry into questions of cultural patrimony. What are the rights and obligations to individual, community, nation and to the world at large with regard to art traditions and to the possession and value of artifacts? The DVD while providing viewers a window into a specific encounter, allude by undercurrent, to the larger and more general problems surrounding the questions of collecting, sharing, salvaging, restoring, promoting, marketing and possessing objects that have a particular purpose and place in the culture that creates them from the one in which they are now found. The engagement hopefully makes the viewer reflect more critically about his or her possessions that grace the walls and space of the private domain we call home.
Review
"This tape is innovative in style and provocative in content....I am certain other anthropologists, art historians and professors teaching cultural studies will be most interested in this fine work." - Jay Ruby, The Center for Visual Communication
As Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) modernizes, her gods change also. Some are fading away and some are becoming more powerful. The strange story told in this documentary shows a revival of mystical belief in the ancient Hindu god, Kataragama.
Reviews
"'Asante Market Women' ... delves into the intricacies of a polygamous society in a modern African state." - Booklist
"Thought provoking... for discussions on anthropology and religion. Recommended for college and public library collectors." - Library Journal
By Allen Moore, akos oster and the Film Study Center at Harvard University
Serpent Mother is about devotion to the Goddess of Snakes and the importance of divine female power in West Bengal Indian life. The film's focus is the Jhapan Festival, the great celebration of snakes. Shown are festival preparations, the role of traditional arts and crafts in the worship of the Goddess, devotional singing, and an exposition of ritual action. The difficult and complex symbolism of the ritual is explained by the participants themselves. In addition to the commentary, this makes accessible what is, at first glance, exotic and inexplicable behavior.
This film belongs to the Pleasing God series of films about how Hindus worship. These films are studies of the devotional practicies associated with three major deities of the Hindu pantheon. They were made in the small, historic town of Vishnupur, West Bengal - a town of temples, crafts and markets, the center of an old kingdom, and a place where daily life and worship are closely intertwined.
Sons of Shiva is a sustained attempt to film a four-day ceremony concerned with the worship of Shiva. Devotees of the God Shiva are shown from the initial taking of the Sacred Thread through gradually intensifying action to a culmination in a variety of ascetic and self denying practices. Devotees are also shown in informal activities such as preparing food and listening to recitals of devotional songs by the famous mendicant Bauls of Bengal.
Among the specific devotional practices is the fulfillment of vows to please the gods. Many devotees resolve to roll in prostration through the field to the shrine of Shiva. Others participate in the nightly processions that involve falling in trance while dancing and holding a symbol of Shiva on oneos head. One of the highlights of the film is a performance by a group of Bauls (wandering holy men and religious troubadours) who sing devotional songs for the resting devotees.
This film belongs to the Pleasing God series of films about how Hindus worship. These films are studies of the devotional practicies associated with three major deities of the Hindu pantheon. They were made in the small, historic town of Vishnupur, West Bengal - a town of temples, crafts and markets, the center of an old kingdom, and a place where daily life and worship are closely intertwined.
By Allen Moore, akos oster and the Film Study Center at Harvard University
Loving Krishna is about the worship of Krishna and the meaning of devotion. It explores the rural and urban character of the town of Vishnapur in West Bengal by examining the royal past, everyday life, work in traditional arts and crafts, bazaar exchange, and sacred rituals and festivals. Public and private devotional life is represented by detailed visual narratives of the Chariot Journey of Krishna, celebrated by the whole town, and the Birthday Festival commemorated on a much smaller scale of intimate family worship.
This film belongs to the Pleasing God series of films about how Hindus worship. These films are studies of the devotional practicies associated with three major deities of the Hindu pantheon. They were made in the small, historic town of Vishnupur, West Bengal - a town of temples, crafts and markets, the center of an old kingdom, and a place where daily life and worship are closely intertwined.
In India, the most secluded section of the palace was the zenana, or women's quarters. Here, until recently, palace women lived behind protective walls and brass doors firmly shut at night. This film is an account of women's life in the Dhrangadra, in northern India, the seat of power of the Jhala Rajputs from the 11th century A.D. until 1947. The film unfolds through songs, dances, and stories of several palace women, including the Maharini (wife of the Maharaja), who is the mother of one of the filmmakers. She and others reflect upon traditional women's roles, the strictness of their former seclusion, and the ideals of women's purity and inner strength.
Review
"Of particular interest is the Maharani's account of how she left PURDAH (seclusion) in 1967 to help her husband, H.H. Maharaj Rana Harish Chandra, contest state election, and how she too was persuaded to run for office in 1971. One notices how in a photograph of her on that occasion the tail of her SARI passes over the left shoulder in the popular fashion, rather than over the right shoulder in the parochial manner of the Zenana..." - Paul Hockings, American Anthropologist
A one-hour video narrated by Nazir Jairazbhoy and Amy Catlin. The authors return in 1984 to the original sites of Arnold Bake's 1938 South Indian fieldwork in order to solicit responses to his photographs and audio recordings of numerous performance traditions in an examination of continuity and change. The video incorporates Bake's 16mm films and audio recordings. It also shows the background of this Dutch scholar, the methodologies used in both fieldtrips, and concludes with an examination of the impact of classification, modernization, institutionalization, and festivalization of performance.