Programme 13

Boral Pather Panchali (2017)
Director: Alex Cunningham
United States of America
Documentary | 12 min
No dialogue

Alex Cunningham travelled to India to find the shooting location of Satyajit Ray’s 1955 masterpiece, Pather Panchali. Once a rural village, Boral is now a bustling suburb with electricity, running water and densely packed paved roads—the signs of any modern Indian town. However, in many ways, Boral remains the same. The town knows and is proud of its place in cinematic history, but life goes on uninterrupted.

Festival of Lamps: A Few Rhymes(2018)
Director: Danyal Rasheed
Pakistan
Documentary | 25 min
Punjabi

Mela Chiraghan or ‘festival of lamps’ is an annual celebration commemorating the death anniversary of the Punjabi Sufi poet and saint Shah Hussain, who lived in Lahore in the 16th century. With the arrival of spring, a diverse array of subaltern groups seeking wish fulfilment, blessings of the saint, states of ecstasy and union with the divine flock to the poet’s shrine, where they engage in devotional rituals.

Warmer and Warmer(2019)
Director: Sabrina Zhao
United Arab Emirates
Documentary | 11 min
Mandarin with Arabic and English subtitles

Vicky, a 25-year-old Chinese expat, works as a mural painter at the Warner Bros. World construction site in Abu Dhabi. At a moment of heightened emotion, Vicky, her friends and the filmmaker converge at a transient space, imagining, dreaming and hoping to be remembered by the city. While recounting the everyday experiences of Vicky and her friends, the narrator attempts to understand her obscure relationships with them.

Memory Beings (2018)
Director: Sudha Padmaja Francis
India
Documentary | 25 min
Malayalam with English subtitles

This impressionistic work paints a picture of Kozhikode, a town in North Kerala, and the spiritual immersion of its ordinary residents in music. The film travels through the music and memories of many people—from a radio shop owner to a small time singer, (rare) female singers who performed in traditional musical gatherings in the past, singers who are labourers in the market and connoisseurs of music, objects and memory.