Can India have its Adolescence? Deepanjana Pal writes on films that fill a void
How Loves Moves, an exquisite documentary set in Delhi, is showing at an art gallery. Where else must we seek out our best and brightest?
In a far corner of the art gallery Project 88, there hangs a velvet curtain with the Urdu word Dum (Breath) etched on it in gold thread.
A few steps away lies a white body bag, embroidered with colourful peacocks. In the belly of the gallery is a large screen. When it lights up to play artist Pallavi Paul’s film, How Love Moves, the screen becomes a portal that takes the viewer to the Delhi Gate cemetery.
Two narrators share their stories with the viewer, over the course of 63 minutes.
One is a migrant who came to India in search of a new life and found love, only to end up witnessing her husband’s brutal murder during the Delhi riots of 2020.
The other is a talkative gravedigger named Shamim Khan, who helped bury about 4,000 bodies amid the devastating first two waves of Covid-19 and the riots that ravaged the capital in February 2020.
These two voices keep alive the memory of the many who have been anonymised and turned into data points by death and trauma. “Those who understand death know the dead are not worthless,” Khan says, at one point. “They’re Allah’s creations and must be returned to Him with respect.”
Paul, 37, is a gifted interviewer. Her subjects seem aware of the camera but not performing for it. There are hauntingly beautiful moments shot by cinematographer Ashok Meena, which offer an intimate and uncliched view of Delhi as a city of mist, shadows and earth tones. Meena’s cinematic gaze highlights the grace in the people and places it records, rather than the scars. The film makes space for ugliness too, through Paul’s use of viral mobile clips that were circulated during the lockdown, and snippets from TV news coverage of the riots.
How Love Moves is a moving and powerful film about our recent past, and one that is all the more impactful because we, as a society, seem intent on pretending the pandemic and its effects are behind us. Our almost frenzied need to forget runs counter to what Paul has done: remember and feel for that past.
If you’re in Mumbai, brave the dug-up streets and unforgiving traffic to see her film. Since it is part of Paul’s solo exhibition at Project 88 (on until April 26) , it is freely available to anyone who can journey to Colaba. In a weird way, this technically makes How Love Moves more accessible than most documentaries in India. In practical terms, of course, it makes the film less approachable to many who feel uncomfortable with the white-box cocoon of contemporary art. Perhaps Paul will be able to make a conventional documentary film someday, though anyone who knows what that entails in India would balk at the idea.
Last week, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap was venting about just this, on Instagram, after watching the masterpiece that is Adolescence, created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham.
It isn’t surprising that Kashyap was triggered by Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos’s gushing comments about the miniseries on social media. The coffee shops of Bandra and Versova are haunted by the echoes of disgruntled writers, directors and technicians who blame interfering producers for mangling their work out of shape.
“It frustrates me. How do we ever create something so powerful and honest with a bunch of most dishonest and morally corrupt @netflix.in backed so strongly by the boss in LA,” Kashyap wrote.
Netflix has admittedly produced little to match Adolescence in years (though it has thankfully at least continued to acquire assets such as this series and last year’s Baby Reindeer).
Incidentally, if you’re feeling a bit of post-Adolescence emptiness, find Avinash Arun and Ishani Banerjee’s School of Lies, which is one of the most poignant portraits of boyhood in Indian entertainment. The 2023 series is streaming on JioHotstar.
Then watch Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls (2024; streaming on Amazon Prime), which won the prestigious Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award last month.
Against all odds, somehow, there are storytellers who manage to create work that is impactful, courageous and beautiful. There’s one currently showing at an art gallery.
(To reach Deepanjana Pal with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram)
In a far corner of the art gallery Project 88, there hangs a velvet curtain with the Urdu word Dum (Breath) etched on it in gold thread.
A few steps away lies a white body bag, embroidered with colourful peacocks. In the belly of the gallery is a large screen. When it lights up to play artist Pallavi Paul’s film, How Love Moves, the screen becomes a portal that takes the viewer to the Delhi Gate cemetery.
Two narrators share their stories with the viewer, over the course of 63 minutes.
One is a migrant who came to India in search of a new life and found love, only to end up witnessing her husband’s brutal murder during the Delhi riots of 2020.
The other is a talkative gravedigger named Shamim Khan, who helped bury about 4,000 bodies amid the devastating first two waves of Covid-19 and the riots that ravaged the capital in February 2020.
These two voices keep alive the memory of the many who have been anonymised and turned into data points by death and trauma. “Those who understand death know the dead are not worthless,” Khan says, at one point. “They’re Allah’s creations and must be returned to Him with respect.”
Paul, 37, is a gifted interviewer. Her subjects seem aware of the camera but not performing for it. There are hauntingly beautiful moments shot by cinematographer Ashok Meena, which offer an intimate and uncliched view of Delhi as a city of mist, shadows and earth tones. Meena’s cinematic gaze highlights the grace in the people and places it records, rather than the scars. The film makes space for ugliness too, through Paul’s use of viral mobile clips that were circulated during the lockdown, and snippets from TV news coverage of the riots.
How Love Moves is a moving and powerful film about our recent past, and one that is all the more impactful because we, as a society, seem intent on pretending the pandemic and its effects are behind us. Our almost frenzied need to forget runs counter to what Paul has done: remember and feel for that past.
If you’re in Mumbai, brave the dug-up streets and unforgiving traffic to see her film. Since it is part of Paul’s solo exhibition at Project 88 (on until April 26) , it is freely available to anyone who can journey to Colaba. In a weird way, this technically makes How Love Moves more accessible than most documentaries in India. In practical terms, of course, it makes the film less approachable to many who feel uncomfortable with the white-box cocoon of contemporary art. Perhaps Paul will be able to make a conventional documentary film someday, though anyone who knows what that entails in India would balk at the idea.
Last week, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap was venting about just this, on Instagram, after watching the masterpiece that is Adolescence, created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham.
It isn’t surprising that Kashyap was triggered by Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos’s gushing comments about the miniseries on social media. The coffee shops of Bandra and Versova are haunted by the echoes of disgruntled writers, directors and technicians who blame interfering producers for mangling their work out of shape.
“It frustrates me. How do we ever create something so powerful and honest with a bunch of most dishonest and morally corrupt @netflix.in backed so strongly by the boss in LA,” Kashyap wrote.
Netflix has admittedly produced little to match Adolescence in years (though it has thankfully at least continued to acquire assets such as this series and last year’s Baby Reindeer).
Incidentally, if you’re feeling a bit of post-Adolescence emptiness, find Avinash Arun and Ishani Banerjee’s School of Lies, which is one of the most poignant portraits of boyhood in Indian entertainment. The 2023 series is streaming on JioHotstar.
Then watch Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls (2024; streaming on Amazon Prime), which won the prestigious Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award last month.
Against all odds, somehow, there are storytellers who manage to create work that is impactful, courageous and beautiful. There’s one currently showing at an art gallery.
(To reach Deepanjana Pal with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram)
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