Mother Truth and her Unruly, Loving Children
Feb. 29, 2020 - April 30, 2020
CAMP, Rooftop
A season of artist films at CAMP
To watch the filmmaker Sukhdev giggle theatrically through his dialogue about the "future of documentary films in India" at 20:41 in SNS Sastry's "Flashback" in 1974 is uncomfortable in a few different ways. We sense the inability of a radical to imagine the future. It is a slightly unconvincing melodramatic performance. He disses people who may sing songs in future documentaries. And yet, he is right about ad-film-like documentaries of the future, which is discomforting in its own way.
As years have gone by and some of the habits and modes of production that lay at the unspoken heart of Sukhdev's cynicism have receded, there remains a subterranean and maybe transformed set of questions about the "production of truth" at the heart of the documentary project. Contemporary artists and filmmakers working in a documentary idiom today deal in a dynamic realism that is haunted by performativity on the one hand and truth on the other. By truth here we mean the author's fidelity to an external reality not inside one's head, such as a city, or a group of people. By performance, we mean that this reality is not fixed, and its subjects are active and unpredictable.
Over the years, realisms have gained names and atmospheres: social realism, capitalist realism, speculative and magic realisms. These are all quite different concepts, but one starting lesson is that we are no longer in the old opposition between documentary and fiction. We could then replace an absolute idea of truth with a question of what kinds of reality (as opposed to idealisms) are being observed and amplified in contemporary video. The political stakes here are crucial: a) it is about learning from a world, its actual sites of resistances and possibilities, b) it has proposals for how to reorganise creative thinking, existing worlds and technologies and c) it is a way to have more time on your side: the extended time of making with others, the time that radiates out of a film you made, and a time for discussions afterwards.
This season of projections at CAMP begins on weekend evenings starting Saturday, February 29, or leap year day.
By RSVP only. Send a mail to contactATstudio.camp
(Image: Oh that's Bhanu, RV Ramani)
Sessions
The first few evenings of the program are below, the artists will be present for extended discussions.
29th February, Saturday
A Timeline and a Film, with Priya Sen.
7:00 pm.
ASSEMBLY, A timeline from Shaheen Bagh. 30 min
followed by:
YEH FREEDOM LIFE, 70 min.
8th March Sunday
7:00pm
Ghode ko Jalebi Khilane Le Ja Riya Hoon with Anamika Haksar
121 min
14th March Saturday
7:00pm
Janani's Juliet with Pankaj Rishi Kumar
53 min
21st March Saturday
Double bill with RV Ramani
Oh that's Bhanu
112 min
+
Santhal Family to Mill Recall
112 min
More to be announced.
