[Sarai Newsletter] APRIL 2006

[The Sarai Programme]

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***************************************** SARAI NEWSLETTER APRIL 2006 
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[[CONTENTS]]


*CONVERSATIONS*

1. Nangla's Delhi


*FILM*

2. Film @ Sarai: Film Remembers Video

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[[CONVERSATIONS]]

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Nangla's Delhi
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Over the last 35 years we have seen a massive internal dislocation of 
habitations and life worlds within this city, Delhi. This is something
that started with high intensity in Delhi from the early 70s. Now the 
process of this internal dislocation has become intense and harder.

Nangla Maachi is a 30 year old habitation. It was created by its 
inhabitants over this period along the river bank and next to Pragati 
Maidan (Progress Ground). It has now become valuable real estate...Built 
on prime land for the new urban development, the last week has witnessed 
the destruction, and slow emptying of Nangla Maachi.

Sarai/Ankur had set up a cybermohalla lab in Nangla Maachi two years 
ago. Many a practitioner has been through the lab. Over these two years, 
diaries have been written by the lab practitioners. These diary entries 
stubbornly remind us that Nangla was made into a lively, heterogeneous 
habitation by countless peoples efforts and needs to be remembered for 
this creative act of making and finding ways of living together.

The diary is now a record of a contested terrain of the violence of 
dislocation.

We have set up a blog in both English and Hindi, to share with a wider 
public the various diary entries of the practitioners. Since the 
eviction process began, practioners have been blogging almost on a daily 
basis. Do visit it, read it, circulate it, share it and link it further. 
Your comments and stories will be very valuable.

English language blog:
http://nangla.freeflux.net/

Hindi language blog:
http://nangla-maachi.freeflux.net/

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[[FILM]]

We are happy to announce that film screenings curated by the Sarai 
programme will also be screened at the Khoj artists collective. This 
marks a collaborative initiative between Sarai and Khoj. This new series 
of screenings will run on Thursdays at Khoj at 6:00 pm and on Fridays at 
Sarai-CSDS at the usual time, 4:30 pm.

These screenings have been an integral part of Sarai's programming and 
public profile for five years. The screenings have been a space for 
people from diverse backgrounds - academics and students, practitioners, 
artists and researchers – to converse with each other about the way in 
which films speak to the times that they were made in, and to the times 
we live in.

We hope that with this initiative a new public will find the Sarai 
screenings, and that Sarai will find a new public, bringing new energies 
and approaches into talking and thinking about films. Hoping to see many 
of you, and many good films.

films @ khoj – Thursdays, 5.30 pm
Khoj Studios
S-17 . Khirki Extension.
(Near Sai Baba Temple)
New Delhi-17
Call:91-11-55655874\73
www.khojworkshop.org

Films @ Sarai – Fridays, 4.30 pm


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Film @ Sarai: April – May 2006
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*Film Remembers Video *

TV Video bahut hua
Sabke sar main dard hua
Ticket kataa ke cinema jaa
Aayega bada mazaa…

-Amitabh Bachchan’s character in Manmohan Desai’s Ganga Jamuna 
Saraswati, 1989/./

This April we continue Sarai's occasional series of film curations on 
remembering technologies – both iconic and everyday – which characterize 
the 'modernity' we inhabit. This month’s curation looks at cinema’s 
anxious relationship with Video – a technology which deeply disquiets 
celluloid. The curation focuses on this disquiet – delving into the 
cinema’s meditations on video as voyeurism, video as pornography, video 
as horror, and video as the fear of the untrammeled circulation of the 
image, as most strikingly represented in 'Ringu/The Ring’.

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6th April, Khoj
7th April, Sarai


**||Videodrome||**
Directed by David Cronenberg
1983, 89 minutes


When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV 
station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent 
torture show called /Videodrome/. As he struggles to unearth the origins 
of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow 
world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily 
transformation. /Videodrome/ is one of writer/director David 
Cronenberg’s most original and provocative works, fusing social 
commentary with shocking elements of sex and violence.

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13th April, Khoj
14th April, Sarai


**||Sex, Lies, and Videotape|| * *
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
1989, 100 minutes


Winner of the Palm d'Or and Best Actor awards at the 1989 Cannes Film 
Festival Sex, Lies, and Videotape transformed the independent film 
industry and turned writer-director Steven Soderbergh into the envy of 
aspiring filmmakers everywhere. The movie explores the sexual 
shenanigans and personal preoccupations of its four central characters, 
revolving around a selfish lawyer who responds to his wife by having an 
affair with her free-spirited sister. But when the lawyer's college 
roommate arrives for an unexpectedly extended visit, the neglected wife 
is surprisingly responsive to his hobby of videotaping women as they 
describe their sexual fantasies…


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20th April, Khoj
22nd April, Sarai

**||Boogie Nights|| * *
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
1997, 156 minutes

Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights is a giddy, transporting 
examination of the rise and fall of American porn as an 
almost-mainstream commodity, from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 
1980s. At the heart of this multi layered film with many actors and many 
sub-plots are adult film director Jack Horner and his protégé, the young 
porn star Eddie Adams/Dirk Diggler. The era of "Boogie Nights" is a time 
when porn, then shot on film, could still aspire to ‘art’ and when the 
performers' appeal lay in their resemblance to ‘real’ people. The 
industry changes with video. Not having to worry about filling theaters, 
porn was free to specialize in every possible fetish viewers might want 
to indulge while watching at home. Anticipating the power of the VCR's 
fast-forward button, porn could do away with story line altogether. In 
"Boogie Nights," video spells the end of Jack Horner's dreams. Anderson 
is sharp enough to see the cultural irony in this: porn becoming more 
widespread and retrograde than ever when the country, electing Reagan, 
took its most conservative turn…


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27th April, Khoj
28th April, Sarai

**||Ringu||* *
Directed by Hideo Nakata
1998, 96 minutes

Based on the novel by Koji Suzuki, the movie follows Nanako, a reporter 
who becomes obsessed with the spooky schoolyard tales that tell of a 
tape that, when watched, results in the viewer’s death seven days later. 
/Ringu/’s fear of technology, which is exemplified by the choice of 
instruments its demon uses in invoking its terror (videotape and 
telephone), seems indicative of a larger cultural discomfort with such 
media. That the lead character is a reporter, and a perpetrator of 
media, doesn’t seem to be lost on the film. The trials that she’s put 
through would almost seem to be fitting retribution if they weren’t so 
extreme. The deadline that looms over Nanako’s head this time seems to 
be payback for the exploitation that the media had caused in the past. 
Since the movie’s ending seems to actually encourage piracy, everything 
about the film seems to be filled with self-loathing and a longing for 
self-destruction that lies just under the surface…

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All screenings at Khoj at 5.30 pm, Thursdays
All screenings at Sarai at 4.30 pm, Fridays

The programme is subject to last minute changes.

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END OF NEWSLETTER