[Sarai Newsletter] October Newsletter- 2007

[The Sarai Programme]

Newsletter- October 2007

[[CONTENTS]]

SEPTEMBER REVIEW

CINE: Creative Industries Network Events

Suzana Cook at Sarai
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Announcement
RGF-Sarai FLOSS fellowship announcement
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Films at Sarai
Sai Paranjpye Comedies
Chasme Buddoor
Katha
Curated by Manvi Sharma

The Lightning Testimonies
Director: Amar Kanwar
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Comic Book Reading
Reading on Tintin Comic Series
Speaker: Orijit Sen
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Dear Friends,
First a review of last month’s happenings at Sarai and elsewhere.

SEPTEMBER REVIEW:

CINE: Creative Industries Network Events
London’s Living Room, City Hall, GLA
September 3rd, 2007

Organized by Watermans Arts Centre, CINE was part of the 'India Now' 
events. ‘India Now’ was a 3 month season centering on contemporary 
trends in Indian art and culture. The evening programme, held at the 
City Hall was chaired by Andrew Ward, Director of Development, Thames 
Valley University and speakers included Ali Zaidi, Artistic Director, 
Motiroti.
Iram Ghufran spoke about the works and processes of the Media Lab. Using 
'Building Sight'* as an exemplary model of engagement and interaction 
between art practice and theory, then on exhibition at Watermans, Iram 
spoke of Sarai's commitment to collaborative practice, to innovation and 
experimentation. The event attracted artists, film makers, media 
students, musicians, academics, and writers. The presentations were 
followed by informal interaction with the speakers.

'Building Sight' to quote from the curatorial note, “is a sketch of how 
a way of thinking about a city has to be constructed, brick by brick. 
Cities are being built all the time. Construction never ends; no one can 
say precisely when it began, work is in progress." The exhibition brings 
together together architects, writers, historians, film scholars, 
cinematographers, researchers and practitioners onto a platform set in 
contemporary art practice.
Some of the works on display such as Autopoesis (Ravikant Sharma + 
Prabhat Kumar Jha), City Guide I (Solomon Benjamin) and A Wall and a 
Sofa (CyberMohalla Ensemble) were produced in collaboration with Sarai 
Media Lab.
Works on show from the Sari Media Lab were:
-Ectropy Index by Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Shuddhabrata 
Sengupta, Monica Narula) + Iram Ghufran+Mrityunjay Chatterjee with 
research inputs from Taha Mehmood.
This html info face work builds an argument through research notes and 
repurposed cultural material. "Ectropy" means a general increase in 
organization. An "ectropy index", therefore, is a measure of the 
increase of information, or of order, in a given system. Identity cards 
and identity theft, fingerprints and forgeries, surveillance and 
shadows, data bodies and data crashes, biometrics and body sculpting 
seem to define significant features of the topography of our moment. 
Ectropy Index seeks to create a tension between entropic and ectropic 
impulses continually contesting the levels of order and systematization 
within a system. For more see 
http://www.sarai.net/practices/media-forms/ectropy-index
-City Games: Sarai.txt by Broadsheet Collective (Aarti Sethi, Iram 
Ghufran, Shveta Sarda) + Mrityunjay Chatterjee

City Games is a special edition of Sarai.txt, a periodic experimental 
publication that interprets and renders research about urban realities. 
City Games uses interesting image - text juxtapositions to raise some 
questions to the city. It turns the ordered forms of urban space 
inside-out, and opens up a poetics of the ‘interiority’ of exposed 
spaces in the routine of the city.
To download a pdf version, go to 
http://www.sarai.net/publications/sarai.txt/07-city-games
For all issues of Sarai.txt, go to 
http://www.sarai.net/publications/sarai.txt/

* Building Sight: Curatorial Project by Raqs Media Collective was on 
show at Watermans from Friday 29th Jun - Mon 10th September. Exhibiting 
artists included: Sanjay Kak, Ruchir Joshi, Satyajit Pande, Solomon 
Benjamin, Ravikant Sharma, Prabhat Kumar Jha, Nancy Adajania, 
CyberMohalla Ensemble, Sarai Media Lab and the Sarai.txt Broadsheet 
Collective.
See - 
http://www.watermans.org.uk/exhibitions/20072007building_sight_curatorial_project/
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Suzana Cook at Sarai
September 22nd, 2007

Susana Cook's solo performance, 'The Unpatriotic Act, Homeland 
Insecurities', ran to a packed house on Saturday, Sept 22nd, at the 
Sarai cafe. Susana was co-hosted by Nigah and Sarai. Anurima Bannerji,
poet and dance theorist, and Susana's partner, opened the act with 3 
poems. The poems were around themes of sexual violence and identity. 
There were many takers and appropriate applause.

Susana started her performance invoking a big gay piano. It was an 
immediate hit. She was quick and
relentless. The gay piano gave way to a childhood in a circus and being 
abandoned by them along with Sandy the monkey. She spoke of a journey 
north, with Sandy for a while, and then having to lose Sandy one day 
because he found his way. She talked about negotiating and being in life 
as it happens and of looking for work and love and sex and being hated 
and hating and wanting to create art and being its embodiment and its 
beginning and end. And then she declared, "When I die, I want to become 
a website…"

After this she went on to the politics in the US of A, about the way 
life is in America post September 11th, and freedom according to 
national security, and God.
Her earlier part was played with randomness and she presented everyday 
situations in a manner that felt ludicrous and absurd and lucid at the 
same time. The parts about America were a little predictable, but her 
use of a couple of bizarre images, made the performance highly 
enjoyable. The programme was concluded with a question-answer session.

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Upcoming Events and an Announcement:

This month as autumn sets in, we can make ourselves cozy with three film 
screenings, of which two will be Sai Paranjpye’s light hearted films 
Chasme Buddoor and Katha and the third will be Amar Kanwar’s latest 
venture, The Lightning Testimonies. We have a comic book reading event 
at the end of the month which is in collaboration with the French 
Culture Centre. But first we bring you the announcement of an initial 
list of proposals that have been accepted for the RGF-Sarai FLOSS 
Fellowships Programme.

Hope you will make yourself available for the events and access the 
particulars announced to you.

Best,
Mitoo Das
Programme Coordinator
Sarai, CSDS
Email me at: mitoo at sarai.net
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Announcement:
This is the initial list of proposals that have been accepted for the 
RGF-Sarai FLOSS fellowships programme.
Here is the current list of fellows for the 2007-2008 cycle:
1. Sawood Alam, et al:
Urdu Localization of GNOME 2.20

2. Sachin Joshi, Venkatesh Keri:
Hindi Speech Recognition System using CMU Sphinx
Framework

3. Ravishankar Shrivastava:
Hindi Localization of KDE 4

4. Dr. C. S. Yogananda, and D. Shivashankar:
SAGAR: Typesetting Indian languages in TeX / LaTeX

FLOSS fellows will be contacted independently to inform them of details.

This year, Sarai received over 30 proposals spanning a wide range of 
topics, of which more than half were of high quality. It has been a 
really difficult task for us to try to fit the number of excellent 
proposals into the available resources, and in fact we have decided to 
actively solicit more funding in order to be able to accommodate more of 
these. Thus, in about 4 months time, we expect to make an announcement 
of a second set of fellowships from among the short list below:

1. Kishore Asok:
A Beginner's Guide and Video Presentation on Learning
Science with Phoenix and Free Software

2. Niyam Bhushan:
Documentation for 'Digital Color Workflows' under FOSS

3. Sriram Chaudhary, and Jagadeesh Gorla:
Rupantar - An English to Hindi Translation Package

4. Abhishek Choudhary, Sweta Choudhary:
Hindawi Indic Programming Languages and System Software

5. Jayesh Goel
Providing an Information Dissemination System for the
City Public Transport

6. Hassath
Assessment of the ICT Practices of a Sample Set of NGOs
in Delhi, and an Exploration of their Readiness to Convert
to FLOSS

7. Anand Kulkarni:
Localizing Open Office User Guide in Marathi and Urdu,
and Development of Animated Software for Open Office
Instruction

8. Abhishek Kumar:
Enhancement of News rack for Media Analysis

9. Prem Kumar, et al:
Prajna FLOSS corps for Teaching FLOSS-based Solutions,
with an Aim to Uplifting the Poor.

10. Jayasimha Makhineni:
Moodle for Hindi and Telugu Languages

11. Hari Prasad Nadig
Aspell Dictionary and Localisation work in Kannada

12. Fred Noronha
Book of Stories about FLOSS work in India, Asia, and
Africa.

13. Santhosh Thottingal:
Aspell Malayalam Spelling Checker

Please contact floss at sarai.net should you have any further queries. For 
a public discussion on this topic, please address posts to the Sarai PRC 
mailing list: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc

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Films at Sarai:
Chasme Buddoor and Katha.
Director: Sai Paranjpye
Curated By: Manvi Sharma

“Sai Paranjpye and her films have always been an inspiration for me and 
have helped me to develop a taste in filmmaking. Her films encouraged me 
to broaden my imagination of films to a certain detailed perspective. It 
is obvious from the kind of films she has made that she can easily play 
around with the serious genre (Sparsh) and the light rib-tickling films 
(Chasme Buddoor) with much ease. At a time when filmmakers of parallel 
cinema displayed their concerns of the then social and political 
situation in a profound way, Sai chose the mid-path between commercial 
and serious cinema by inducing humour in the day to day concerns of 
social life.
Though most of you must have seen these two light-hearted films, Chasme 
Buddoor and Katha, come and watch them again and just feel laid-back and 
free from the hustle and bustle of your daily life. I promise you, Sai’s 
films have the magic to do that to you!”-Manvi Sharma

1. Chasme Buddoor, 1981
Director: Sai Paranjpye
Cast: Farooq Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Saeed Jaffrey, Ravi Baswani and 
Rakesh Bedi
Length: 145 mins
Language: Hindi
12th October, 4:30 pm
Seminar Room, CSDS

Chashme Buddoor is that rare comic Hindi film which is funny without 
being puerile. This Sai Paranjpye humour fest was a frothy hit when 
released in 1981 and brought about a mini revival of clean, homespun 
comedies. Two womanizing slackers, Omi and Jai (Rakesh Bedi and Ravi 
Baswani respectively) attempt to woo the new girl (Deepti Naval) in the 
neighbourhood, and fail - miserably. Their third room-mate (Farooq 
Shaikh), shy, and a bookworm - succeeds, much to their chagrin. The two 
scheme up comical ideas to split the lovebirds, so that their secrets 
and humiliation are not revealed. This was a film whose off-the-cuff 
insights rang true and were funny as well. With the zaniness factor kept 
within believable limits and with its frantic pacing, this whacked out 
comedy is simply bags of fun.

2. Katha, 1983
Director: Sai Paranjpye
Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Farooq Shaikh, Deepti Naval, Jalal Agha and others
Length: 141mins
Language: Hindi
19th October, 4:30 pm
Seminar Room, CSDS

Rajaram P. Joshi (Naseeruddin Shah) is a middle-class Clerk living in a 
chawl in Bombay. He is secretly in love with his neighbor, Sandhya 
Karnik (Deepti Naval) but is unable to disclose his love for her. 
Rajaram's fast-tallking friend, Bashudev (Farooq Shaikh) comes for a 
visit and makes himself at home. Bashudev starts wooing Sandhya and soon 
both in love with each other. The Karniks decide to marry Sandhya and 
Bashudev, much to the misery of Rajaram. But on the day of the 
engagement, Bashudev disappears, and the engagement is called-off. 
Rajaram offers to marry the devastated Sandhya, but she tells him that 
she has been very intimate with Bashudev, and is pregnant, and it 
remains to be seen if Rajaram will accept Sandhya or otherwise.

About the Director (Sai Paranjpye):
A woman director/writer, Sai Paranjpye started her career as a producer 
for Delhi Doordashan Television. She directed two award-winning films 
for children Jadoo Ka Shankh (1974) and Sikhandar (1976) while she was 
in charge of the Children's Film society. Her first feature film, Sparsh 
(The Touch) (1978-79), won three national awards, her next two films, 
Chashme Buddoor (1981-82) and Katha (1983-84) were light comedies, and 
her fourth feature, Disha (Immigrants) (1990-91) was a social commentary 
on migrant workers' plight. Following The Forest Love Bird in 1994, she 
made Saaz (Melody) in 1997, which is inspired by the life story of two 
legendary singers of Indian commercial cinema.

About Manvi Sharma:
Manvi Sharma did her graduation in journalism from Makhanlal Chaturvedi 
University of Mass Communication in the year of 2007. Her first 
experience in film making has been as a script writer and assistant 
director for a short fiction film “THE REFLECTION” under the production 
of Films For Freedom. She has herself scripted and directed three short 
films “The Penultimate Truth, Last Minute…? Descending Dawn”. She is a 
member of Film Writers Association of India and of India Habitat Film 
Club. She is currently working as journalist for a website named 
thespiangroup.

The Lightning Testimonies, 2007
Director: Amar Kanwar
Length: 116 mins
Language: English/ Hindi
26th October, 4:30 pm
Seminar Room, CSDS

Why is one image different from the other? Why does an image seem to 
contain many secrets? What can release them so as to suddenly connect 
with many unknown lives?

The Lightning Testimonies reflects upon a history of conflict in the 
Indian subcontinent through experiences of sexual violence. As the film 
explores this violence, there emerge multiple submerged narratives, 
sometimes in people, images and memories, and at other times in objects 
from nature and everyday life that stand as silent but surviving 
witnesses. In all narratives the body becomes central – as a sit for 
honour, hatred and humiliation and also for dignity and protest.

As the stories unfold, women from different times and regions come 
forward. The film speaks to them directly, trying to understand how such 
violence is resisted, remembered and recorded by individuals and 
communities. Narratives hidden within a blue window or the weave of a 
cloth appear, disappear and are then reborn in another vocabulary at 
another time. Using a range of visual vocabularies the film moves beyond 
suffering into a space of quiet contemplation, where resilience creates 
a potential for transformation.
Amar Kanwar is an independent film maker, living in and working from New 
Delhi. Responding to conditions in contemporary India, his films 
primarily concerns issues relating to violence, politics, ecology and 
sexuality. While Kanwar’s film A Season Outside (1998) deals with a 
personal and philosophical passage through many zones of violence and 
non-violence, another film A Night Of Prophecy (2002), explores poetry 
in contemporary India through multiple poetic journeys that seek to 
unravel history, time and the future. His works cover topics as diverse 
as the history and politics of collecting water in the desert, the 
physical and mental spaces that men and women carve out for themselves 
within the family, and ecological interpretations of Buddhism. Other 
films have dealt with the opposition between globalization and tribal 
consciousness in the heart of rural India.
What make Kanwar’s films so compelling is the acute immediacy of their 
images and the perplexing, almost beguiling contours of their 
narratives. Kanwar’s films do not explain, they show and tell. They 
create a space of continuous traversing between deep personal zones and 
the complicated outside universe.
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Comic Book Reading
26th October, 5:00 pm
French Cultural Center

The comic book reading's debut this October is part of a collaboration 
between the French Cultural Center and Sarai.

It is designed on similar lines to the film screening culture in Sarai, 
where we invite film makers to screen their works which is followed by a 
critical discussion about the work. Unfortunately comics in India are 
not as flourishing a practice as cinema is. It is therefore extremely 
difficult to find practitioners who, at a regular interval, come up with 
new works.
This is the underlying idea behind having such a comic book reading 
event. The intention is to popularise the discourse of and about comics 
by inviting comic book practitioners/readers/aficionados to talk about a 
work that has been instrumental in moulding their understanding of the 
form. The readings provide the space for a much needed critical look at 
comic books and a common meeting ground for people who have a strong 
attachment to it.

Formally the readings could be seen as a cross between a film screening 
and a book reading where segments of the work being discussed is 
projected on a screen and the reader/animator talks about it. This could 
then be evolved into a performance, an enactment or whatever the 
animator's imagination yields.

The comic book readings will take place twice a month and the space will 
alternate between The French Cultural Center and Sarai.
The first comic book reading is going to take place in The French 
Cultural Center on the 26th October at 5:00 pm.
Orojit Sen (River of Stories, 1994) would be talking about the Tintin 
comic series.
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END OF NEWSLETTER
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