MONITOR: New South Asian Short Film and Video - Canadian Shorts
Saturday, 20 November, 2010. 7:00pm
Winnipeg Film Group's Cinematheque, 100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg MB R3B 1H3
Co-presented by the Winnipeg Film Group
The Winnipeg Film Group and SAVAC (the South Asian Visual Arts Centre), together co-present Monitor, an experimental short film and video-screening program that showcases new and innovative works by artists of South Asian origin. Launched in 2004, Monitor attracts a broad range of critically engaged, poetic and political work including documentary, abstract and / or conceptual film and video work, performance documentation and narrative short films.
Monitor’s shorts series is a selection of the program’s compelling and moving experimental works made by Canadian-South Asian artists over the last six years. They reckon with ideas of loss and displacement, fragmented memories and the uncertainties of everyday life from the migrant experience.
- Review: Kenton Smith, "The power of image and sound, the world around," Uptown. November 19, 2010. <http://www.uptownmag.com/movies/reviews/Monitor-New-South-Asian-Short-Film--Video-109041174.html>
COOLIE GYAL U.A.I.L. GO BACK UNTITLED DISPLACEMENT SERIES #2 FRACTURE DEAD BEAT FIRE, FENCES AND FLIGHT CLIFTON TO SADDAR ISHNAN
Renata Mohamed, 2003, 7:30
Originally screened at Monitor.
A nostalgic reminiscence of an idyllic childhood is threatened, as a daughter struggles to break the news in her tender love-letter to Mom and Dad.
Angad Bhalla, 2003, 22:00
Originally screened at Monitor.
Kashipur is one of India’s poorest regions with a holy respect and reverence for their land. 60,000 villagers are about to be displaced by a mining project. This film documents an emergence of grassroots activism as the locals organize to fight for their home.
Pavitra Wickramasinghe, 2003, 1:00
Originally screened at Monitor.
The act of eating transforms into collision of arresting visual fragments.
Pamila Matharu, 2003, 4:00
Originally screened at Monitor 2.
As visual poem, Fracture intertwines Super 8 home movies, texts and music by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to express loss and memory of Matharu’s father.
Smriti Mehra, 2004, 1:39
Originally screened at Monitor 3.
Quick and bloody, Dead Beat peeks into the day-to-day routine of a Bangalore butcher shop.
Ayesha Hameed, 2005, 5:08
Originally screened at Monitor 3.
An essayistic take on two fire-fueled events in Europe that reveal folly in policy matters and the timeliness of public dissidence in reaction to a troubled immigrant condition.
Faisal Anwar, 2006, 1:00
Originally screened at Monitor 3.
A compressed and rapid vision of mobility between two economically disparate areas in Karachi.
Tejpal S. Ajji, 2007, 7:00
Originally screened at Monitor 3.
Ishnan presents chilly and unpleasant footage of the artist being washed down by a high-pressure car wash hose.
SKIN
Debashis Sinha, 2007, 6:30
Originally screened at Monitor 4.
In Skin, the artist combines the footage generated while handling and rubbing microphones along with sound and light.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
Divya Mehra, 2008, 3:00
Originally screened at Monitor 6.
Using her own body as performing subject, Mehra exploits the internal contradiction of the Youtube era in which private moments garner mass circulation. Her choice of images to illustrate her karaoke take on “A Whole New World,” the hit song from Disney’s 1992 version of Aladdin, is both bitingly funny and devastating.
TAPESTRY
Sharlene Bamboat, 2009, 6:30
Originally screened at Monitor 6.
A Parsi family maintains tradition and identity through the fertility ceremonies preceding a marriage. But the performance of the rituals is unpracticed, self-consciousness and clumsy, and a stubborn coconut symbolizes the challenges of cultural continuity for this small and widely dispersed community.
BARBER OF BANGALORE
Roger Sinha, 2008, 6:30.
Originally screened at Monitor 6.
Rossini’s familiar opera is transported from Seville to the eponymous south Indian metropolis where three bharata natyam dancers interpret the music through a lexicon of facial expression known as abhinaya. The results are surprising, at times amusing, and thoroughly enthralling.
