[Aaj-ke-naam] Fwd: Aaj ke Naam
Padmalatha Ravi
padma2day at yahoo.com
Tue May 28 08:56:07 CEST 2002
Hello,
I am Padmlatha Ravi, completing my Post graduation in broadcast journalism from Asian college of Journalism, Chennai. I'd love to contribute to the film making. I will be situated in Chennai for sometime now and I have been involved in documentary film making as part of the course here. I contributed to scripting, camera work and editing while maikng films for the college. I'd be glad to to be involved in this project.
Looking forward to
Thanks and regards
Padmalatha
Ammu Joseph <rheas at vsnl.com> wrote: Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 10:34:43 +0530
From: Ammu Joseph
To: Yamini Narayanan ,
Yamini , Sneha ,
Padmalatha Ravi
,
Padmalatha
,
Saudamini Raina ,
Saudamini ,
Kasturi Basu ,
Preeti
,
Nagalakshmi ,
Jayanta ,
Brahmananda Shasmal
Subject: Aaj ke Naam
Thought some of you may be interested. Ammu
> ATTACHMENT part 2 message/rfc822 From: "Ananya Chatterjee"
To: "payal kumar"
,
"Pamela D'Mello" ,
"Nivedita Jha" ,
"manipadma jena" ,
"Linda chhakchhuak" ,
"Lalita Iyer"
,
"Lakxmi Murthy" ,
"Kalpana Sharma" ,
"Anjali" , "Ammu Joseph" ,
"ahanthem chitra"
Subject: Fw:
Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 09:26:11 +0530
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 9:23 AM
ANNOUNCEMENT OF AAJ KE NAAM
Dear Friends,
Some of us got together recently in Delhi to discuss the possibility
of responding to the current communal situation in the country as a
community of film makers. In the meeting we decided to produce a
body of work which would represent our protest/statement/comment on
the times we are living in. We do not have the means to support
these productions but we are hoping that each one of us will be able
to generate resources and assistance to make these productions
possible. We hope to put these productions together as a package
which can then be screened all over the country. A detailed statement
(background text) is enclosed in the body of the message below.
We would like to request all those connected with film making to
offer their services/expertise/equipment to make it possible for
these productions to take place. If you can let us know how you can
contribute towards the production we will try and put you in touch
with those in your cities who have agreed to make a video/film.
We are specially interested in statements by new film makers and we
will try to introduce them to camerapersons, sound recordists,
editors who are associated with the project.
Kindly respond at the earliest possible. We have started an egroup
called Aaj ke Naam through which we can interact and share our
thoughts.
The mails for this group can be sent to <aaj-ke-naam at mail.sarai.net>
and the archives/other information about the same can be had from the
following site: http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/aaj-ke-naam
Others from film/media background could also become members of this
egroup by registering at the above site, or requesting us for the
same.
In Solidarity,
Rahul Roy/Yousuf Saeed List Moderators
_________________________________
Background Text : AAJ KE NAAM
In a few weeks, it will almost be two months since the killings began
in Gujarat. We have seen the images on television, not only of the
violence, but also of the ways in which those who orchestrated it
were feted and honoured. As people who work with images, as
documentary filmmakers, we feel an urgent need to address this
reality, so that these images of helpless victims and arrogant
engineers of massacres are not the only ones we will have available
to us to remember and understand a dark time. We also feel that as a
community, we- documentary filmmakers and all those who work with
images. will have failed in our responsibilities if we do not
respond to what has happened. This is why we are writing to you all,
as fellow filmmakers to make a series of interventions that can
begin to address what we have all witnessed in the last weeks and
days.
What have we witnessed? Once again, like in Delhi in 1984, in Meerut
in 1987 and at other places in other times, we have seen how a state
machinery has blatantly demonstrated that it is willing to organize
and implement a pogrom. We have also witnessed a near paralysis of
our imagination, as we clutch at ways of being able to articulate
our sadness and our anger at how the fabric of our social life, of
everyday relations, of the few things that redeemed our cities, have
been torn by the forces that command the state today and by their
agents in society.
If it was Gujarat yesterday, it (the violence that begins in the mind
and in the imagination) is everywhere today, in the arrogance with
which people say "serves them right" in ordinary tea shops and in
elite dinner parties, or in the seriousness, and the ease with which
people express the sentiment that "we need to arm ourselves for a
civil war, fought to the finish" on internet chat rooms, and in
crowded buses. If such a thing happens in our society, in these
times, Lebanon, Yugoslavia and Rwanda will seem picnics by comparions.
For many of us, this has resulted in our being unable to speak, being
unable to react by any means other than being present at an
occasional demonstration, or by signing a petition. This has left
our anger, our despair, un-thought, un-adressed and un-accounted
for. We live as if we had already begun counting our time, as
strangers, unsure of when the next wave of orchestrated madness will
occur and where it will occur. And, even if it does not occur, we
have seen the spaces of conversation, of discourse, steadily being
taken over by fascists and their epigones, or by those who would like
to make capital out of the suffering that arose from the violence.
We have witnessed the cynical politics that makes political parties
prepare themselves for elections in the wake of massacres. We have
seen them gloat in the assurance that violence will reap them the
rewards they seek. We have seen them justify this violence in a
language that would make a Goebbels feel proud of them. They have
told their thousand lies.
How do we address this time? How do we address its silences, its hate
speech, its evasions and its apologies? How do we speak without
garbled and tired cliches about communal amity (as if a davp style
"hindu-muslim-sikh-isai, hum sab hain bhai bhai" poster, or slogan
can do justice to the enormity of what has happened), without having
to defend a moribund state, its tokenism which paved the way for
full-on communalization, and its always pathetic treatment of people
who it decided were not part of the "mainstream", or without
resorting to a demonization of any community and their history?
How do we meaningfully break the silence about Gujarat? And how can
we think about it, not as an aberration (because then it would be
easy to forget and forgive the perpetrators-as abnormal and inhuman
people who are not like you or me) but as a slow poisoning of our
imaginations and of all our minds with images of some people as
"greater than"or "less than" human beings. The media, our
intelligentsia, our artists, everyone is implicated in this process.
How do we account for the greed, the complete erasure of the humanity
of other people, and the inability to think in anything other than a
communal or nationalist binary mode that besets so much of our
contemporary culture, and especially our popular culture, our films
and our television.
Surely, this process has a history that we had begun to be
comfortable with, way before the killings in Gujarat happenned.
Surely, even Hindutva and the politics of hatred has a pre-history
in the way in which people were addressed in terms of their
identities even within what is called secular nationalism. Perhaps
it is about time that we started asking some uncomfortable questions
about how we got to where we have today.
We are documentary filmmakers, we live and work with the raw
materials of the realities, hopes, anxieties and dreams of the lives
of ordinary people. We have seen things that others theorize about,
or report, or convert into political manifestoes. Sometimes we
hesitate to say things, not because we dont want to say them, but
because we know that the realities that they attempt to describe are
very complicated, and not reducible to easy, newsy television bytes.
Some of us met in Delhi, one afternoon in March, when Rahul Roy and
Saba Dewan called us to consider what we can do together with our
craft and our skills in the wake of the killings in Gujarat. They
wrote,-"ŠCan we dream of film makers from all parts of the country
lodging their protests with videos on the communal situation which
are then shown together as a body of work? Can we do it, or rather
shouldn't we do it? "
We decided that the time had come for us to challenge our own
silence, our own awkward hesitations and our own confusions, despair
and anger about what we know is happening around us.
This letter emerges from that decision.
We have decided to make a collection of short films/videos that
articulate what we are thinking and feeling, some of which we have
tried to summarize above. These are not films for a cause, because
there is no cause to uphold. We are tired of causes that make people
into the objects of political projects that are always larger than
the reality of peoples lives. We are tired of the rhetoric of
communities, nations, states and all things that claim our
loyalties. We want to speak of and to the concreteness of particular
experiences, our experiences and yours and the experience of those
who have suffered and witnessed suffering. We make no larger claims.
These are not films that say "This is what needs to be done",
because we are not sure about "what needs to be done". We may have
our own differences, but we are agreed on the fact that the time for
people to be told that "this, or that, needs to be done" has long
gone.
These are not films we are making because someone has commissioned us
to make them, because no one has and no one will. These are films
that promise nothing to their makers other than a means to engage
with their times. They are not funded, they will not be sold, but we
hope to energize a network of peoples organizations, social
movements, groups, and even small affinity groups of individuals to
show and distribute them. They will be made available as VHS tapes,
and will be works available for fair use (for non commercial,
educational, consciouness raising, discussion related purposes)
within the public domain
We have decided to call this collection-"Aaj Ke Naam", (In Today's
Name) taken from the title of a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, which talks
about the difficulty of living through dark times. We felt that
talking about today is necessary and difficult at the same time.
We are certain about the fact that we have anger, remorse and regret,
and that we want to step back and think with our images about what
we are feeling. We invite you to join us in this, to contribute
films/videos, as short as you want them to be. As poster-films, as
music videos, as experimental videos, as still images with
soundtracks, as animations, as computer generated shorts, as simple
video sketches and scratches-as anything that makes sense to you, and
that you feel can give expression to what you are thinking. This is
not an invitation to make the definitive, finished piece of work,
rather it is a call to respond, spontaneously and creatively, with
all and any creative means available at your disposal as a filmmaker
or as a person who works with moving images and sounds.
If you are a technician, ( a cameraperson, a sound recordist, an
editor, a writer, a graphic artist) and would not like to make a
film yourself, or feel that you could contribute better as a
technician, then you can let us know and we can make your offer
known to those who get involved or interested in this project.
The deadline for submission for the first cycle of films is 30
August, 2002. Do let us know what you think of these ideas, and
whether and how you would be interested in joining in or helping out
in any way.
In solidarity
M.K. Srinivasan, Rahul Roy, Raqs Media Collective, Saba Dewan, Sabina
Gadihoke, Sanjay Kak, Shriprakash, Yousuf Sayed.
--
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Wanna know what I am into check out www.theatrecapital.com
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