Mother Truth and her Unruly, Loving Children

Feb. 29, 2020 - April 30, 2020
CAMP, Rooftop

A season of artist films at CAMP
Suspended:(

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.

Related

Pirate Cinema Bombay

Pirate Cinema from Berlin, who we are working with on the video archive
http://pad.ma, present a series of weekly (Sunday) events in the Pirate Cinema tradition, on films and footage.

A Timeline and a Film, with Priya Sen
Feb. 29, 2020
CAMP Rooftop

7:00 pm ASSEMBLY, 30 min.
+
YEH FREEDOM LIFE, 70 min
Followed by a discussion with Priya

Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Ja Riya Hoon
March 8, 2020
CAMP Rooftop

7:00pm
Followed by a discussion with Anamika Haksar and many cast and crew members.

As part of Mother Courage and her Unruly, Loving Children

Kumar's Talkies and Janani's Juliet
March 14, 2020
CAMP Rooftop

POSTPONED :(
We will update with new date shortly
Saturday March 14, 2020
7:00 pm
with Pankaj Rishi Kumar

Evenings at CAMP Rooftop

A roof-top venue that has been active since 2007, in this location since 2009.

Battle for Banaras
Nov. 17, 2016 - Nov. 19, 2016

Battle for Banaras
Kamal Swaroop, 2014
2hrs 13mins
Friday, 18th November. 8 pm
Kamal and the crew will be present.

Through the film we cutaway to the river's edge and two men talking, about this place, and about politics older than the modern Indian city. Then we enter the city again, and its rushes of electoral spectacle, surging crowds, politically astute residents, actions designed for this time and place. When Kamal Swaroop says "I am no longer speaking, in my films" he seems to mean that he watching the crowds, listening, looking from whatever distance is possible, often with a long lens and a small crew.

Many Months in Mirya
Jan. 6, 2018
CAMP Rooftop, Chuim Village

The film evokes the practice of the diary film, at once observational and reflexive, and draws power from its twin strategies of frugal economy and long duration. Screening & discussion with Renu.

John Berger, A Seventh Time
Jan. 11, 2017

Video and Stills with accompanying commentary
90 minutes
7:00 pm
*plus a newly-scanned copy of "A Seventh Man", Berger's photo-text book on migrant work.

A season of long films
Dec. 27, 2013 - Jan. 28, 2014

Pad.ma invites you to
Rivers without Banks
at CAMP

27th December, 2013 through 27th January, 2014

Before the start of a new year; and among big and small resolutions for the future we chose to ask ourselves what is free cinema today, what is its political and perceptual economy, and what could we summon of its powers, before embarking on new journeys of making and thinking.

Rivers without Banks is a screening program of films whose durations extend beyond conventional length. But importantly, this is not a collection put together quantitatively, even as we may argue that the epic scales present in the chosen films carry the weight of histories, and put together chronologically show us a century where individual everyday lives face the annals of terrible power; where the human condition battles with nature and technology, with love and loss, with good and evil.

A Season of Footage and Films


CAMP presents
Saturday or Sunday evening screenings through winter, exploring footage both within and outside the usual capsule of "the film". An experience that could be similar to watching films, or at other times harder to digest, or slower to release, closer to the moment of shooting, less censorious, and less fearful of finitude. Another life, another world of viewing and listening experiences is always possible.

Housing Histories Seminar
Sept. 8, 2018 - Sept. 11, 2018
CAMP Rooftop

"Ghar Mein Shehar Hona: City Housing in a Cultural Matrix, 1951 to 2020". Three evenings of immersive histories on CAMP Rooftop.



Events

Broken Cameras
April 4, 2024 - May 5, 2024
Salt Beyoğlu, Online

featuring
The Neighbour Before the House
Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar
الجار قبل الدار

March 30, 2024 Re-Visioning Indian Cinema

Shaina A speaks about CAMP's past-present-future project and indiancine.ma at CSMVS in conjuction with A Cinematic Imagination: Josef Wirsching & the Bombay Talkies.
What the Cameras Saw and Remembered
March 16, 2024 - March 17, 2024
Capitol Cinema, Melbourne

Two films by CAMP
Al Jaar Qabla Al Daar (The Neighbour before the House)
From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf

Captial Circus (2009)
March 9, 2024 - July 15, 2024
Chiang Mai

in
The Unfaithful Octopus
at
MAIIAM Contemporary

To See is To Change
March 1, 2024 - April 27, 2024
RMIT Design Hub Gallery, Melbourne

with Bombay Tilts Down (2022) and A Photogenic Line, (2019) as part of Photo 24, Melbourne.
In this pair of large-scale works, CAMP explore two sides of their practice; one that produces experimental film and video, often with unusual equipment and angles of participation, and another that creates and animates archives of moving images, documents and photography.

Closing Party! BOMBAY TILTS DOWN
Jan. 21, 2024 - Jan. 21, 2024
Sassoon Docks, Mumbai

Low-End Therapy
By Swadesi crew Kaali Duniya (Bamboy/Tushar Adhav) with guest MC's Kranti Naari, Pratika, MC Mawali, Khabardar Revolt.
BassBrahma and RaakShas Sound
Equality on the dance floor.

Bombay Tilts Down in Mumbai!
Jan. 12, 2024 - Jan. 21, 2024
Sassoon Docks, Mumbai

7-channel environment. 13 mins, on loop with two alternating soundtracks

A vertical landscape movie in facets. Filmed remotely by one CCTV camera from a single-point location atop a 35-floor building on E. Moses Road during the pandemic.

READING LISTENING SEEING Bombay Tilts Down
Jan. 12, 2024 - Jan. 20, 2024
Sassoon Docks, Mumbai

A tour of the work with CAMP in three acts.
12 January 7 pm, ft. Bamboy
13 January 6 pm
14 January 7:30 pm
20 January 7 pm

Dec. 15, 2023 at Networks of Sonic Thinking, Sarai.

CAMP participated in the conference: Modulating Realities at Sarai, Delhi.
Nov. 22, 2023 A Road, Twelve Water Systems, Sixty Thousand Movies...

What Can Happen to Paradigms of Control. A keynote lecture by Forensic Architecture Guest Professors Shaina A & Ashok S. At Goldsmiths, University of London.
All Events