This is a film about a mariner who operates a cargo vessel between the sea port of Kodungalloor near Kochi, once a roaring port town in Kerala. One day, the local police station discovers an unidentified body that has washed ashore. A Budhist nun and another woman identify the rotten body as that of Kutti Sraank. Yet another woman rejects the claim made by the other women and argues that the body is not that of Kutti Sraank. Eventually each woman shares the details of their relationship with Kutti Srank. Kutty Sraank ultimately turns out to be a man who convinced three very different women collectively that he was a committed and faithful husband to each one of them individually. When one life was being lived out, he succeeded in keeping his other two lives a secret.

A widowed forest ranger in the Western Ghats strikes up an unlikely relationship with a madwoman whom he finds lost and alone in the woods. Ignoring the gossip of the nearby village, Vinayak takes the woman into his home. But when she becomes pregnant, the family is brutally cast out. Told in the native tongue of Konkani, a language otherwise hardly used in Indian cinema, this is a beautiful film of loneliness, compassion and the eternal struggle against bigotry.

They have remedies for virtually every disease. They use herbs and plants for medicinal preparations. Their knowledge system is based on centuries of experience that is passed down through the generations, orally. The expertise and skills of these women are valued by their community, who do not have access to any other forms of medical services. Yet there is a need to vitalise and appropriately credit this knowledge which is rapidly being appropriated by the forces of the market.The film is a eulogy to Halamma, Chandramma, Shivamma, Jayamma, Sunandamma and countless such women who are the unsung saviours of many a life.

Set in the lanes and by-lanes of central Bombay’s mill area, the film is a portrait of a women’s co-operative named Annapurna.Started in 1975 by 14 khanawalis – women who prepared meals for migrant workers, thus earning the name ‘food-lady’. The organisation has today swelled to a membership of 150,000 and has it’s own credit co-operative bank, short-stay home and

03 Where healing is a traditionGArGI SEn

1997 | 30min | Colour India

Indian Films01 Kutty Sraank

SHAJI n KArun

2009 | 127min | Colour India

02 Man Beyond the BridgeLAxmIKAnT SHETGAOnKAr

2009 | 96min | Colour India

Annapoorna/Goddess of Food PArOmITA VOHrA

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catering centre. The film observes the everyday life of these women and intertwines it with the story of how the organisation grew. An exploration of the politics and economics of women’s work, the film is a tribute to the fearless women who started Annapoorna and the feisty women who continue to run it.

Across cultures, tradition bars women from engaging in activities of a certain kind- using the plough, casting a fishing net or throwing the potter’s wheel. This film takes a look at three Indian women potters, across the rural-urban, modern-traditional divides, in the context of the taboo of women and the wheel. For the ‘modern’ artist, Shampa, the taboo of course does not exist. ’Traditional’ artists Sara and neelmani do not touch the wheel. The film looks at how the taboo is turned on its head as they find a creative route to its circumvention, in the process, inventing their ‘own wheel’.

Eighty percent of rural women are engaged in livelihoods dependant on natural resources in India. This intense relationship, throws up a whole range of issues and questions. Do we all at large value the knowledge systems, which may have developed among these women? How have women coped with coercion from the state in their accessing of natural resources? This film tries to explore these questions through four focused engagements- with the fisherwomen off the coast of Karnataka ; with the Apatani Women of Ziro, the north Eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh ; with the adivasi and dalit women of Kashipur in the Eastern Indian state of Orissa and with the women of Sonebhadra, in the Central Indian state of uttar Pradesh. Four compelling life stories that are examples of extraordinary courage and fortitude.

This is a cinematic document of the Dussehra festival in the Himalayan town of Almora in uttaranchal.

07 Almoriana VASuDHA JOSHI

2000 | 30min | Colour India

05 Beyond The WheelrAJuLA SHAH

2005 | 59min | Colour India

1995 | 25min | Colour India

Dancing With Hands Held Tight KrISHnEnDu BOSE KAVITA DAS GuPTA

2005 | 62min | Colour India

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Winner of the Golden Statuette for the Best Film on religion at the International Festival of Short Films on Culture, Jaipur in 2007, this film is a cinematic document of the Hola mohalla festival at Anandpur Sahib in Punjab. The festival marks the establishment of the Khalsa Panth by Guru Gobind Singh and is a weeklong celebration of Sikh valour and freedom.

The film, based on true stories, depicts a night in the life of a middle class family woman and her daughter who go through their everyday life of domestic violence which such passivity that the violence itself becomes a routine, accepted aspect of their lives. The man in their lives, husband and the father, respectively, takes away the laughter from their lives and terrorizes their existence. They wait for the dawn to come. Is this what happens indoors, in other places, with other mothers and daughters too? Will the dawn ever come?.

During the world economic recession, a young woman in Bangalore, the IT capital of India, who loses her job, is forced to take an extreme step in order to comply with her mounting financial liabilities. The film examines two days in her life during those hard times and is possibly one of the world’s shortest love stories.

Ammu, a Tamil girl born in a refugee camp in the north east of Sri Lanka, desires to fly. This desire leads her to a path of mystery and magic.

This is a story of a brave girl who is not ready to give up her self respect at any cost. Despite adverse circumstances, she wants to lead her life, her way. Pooja malhotra is facing a crisis. Her husband, an advertising film executive, has thrown away his secure job. They have to vacate the company’s flat. Pooja seems to have come to the end of her tether. much to Pooja’s surprise her husband provides her with a spacious flat. She feels very fulfilled but soon her secure world is once again threatened by something much bigger - her husband, is involved with a film actress, who wants marriage, children and a permanent relationship.

11 And She Flies muGIL CHAnDrAn

2009 | 10min | Colour India

Rowing Her Way Through The River of LifeKrISHnEnDu BOSE

KAVITA DAS GuPTA

2009 | 2min45sec | Colour India

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The Duels of Hola Mohala VAnI SuBrAmAnIAn

2001 | 30min | Colour India

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09 Indoor K.J.SIJu

2010 | 10min | Colour India

Conditions Apply LIJIn JOSE

2010 | 12min | Colour India

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This film travels to Bombay, Delhi, Benares and Shillong, going back in time to reveal how the current crisis of sex ratios had been foretold by those on the forefront of the campaigns against sex determination and pre-selection. It assesses government initiatives, looks beyond the rhetoric and uses the lens of culture to explore common beliefs about daughters and sons within the family and men and women in society.

This documentary is the story of women living with HIV, who defied destiny and persisted on their journey in life, against social ostracism and an uncertain future, with dignity and hope.

This film brings to light the story of a group of elderly Buddhist nuns from Ladakh, the last generation of unordained and uneducated women in robes. They lead quiet lives in isolated high mountains working as domestic helps and road construction labourers. neglected by religious and social systems for centuries, the new nyerma nunnery is their last call for dignity, enhancement and purification of their religious status. This film examines how a woman’s menstrual cycle is altered from being a marker of her fertility to something that renders her untouchable and hence subject to multiple taboos and regulations. As an individual, a woman or girl is isolated in her struggle to come to terms with the transformations in her body.

The film depicts poignant stories of a tribal journalist and a poet in Jharkhand and how they express themselves through these forms to resurrect and comment upon issues relating to tribal identity and culture.

Dhanushkodi, the Indo-Sri Lankan border town, is the crucible wherein history is brewing. It is a this concoction of defeated lives and exhausted dreams. Leena manimekalai, the filmmaker herself, Soori, a half-wit Sri Lankan Tamil refugee, munusamy, a fisherman, rosemary, a social worker in the Jesuit Christian refugee Services, try hard to retain their sanity. Their interactions with the dead or living refugees, their skirmishes with the Indian and Sri Lankan governments, their personal lives overrun by external events, form the kernel of this powerful narrative.

It’s a Boy! (It’s going to be a boy)VAnI SuBrAmAnIAn;

2008 | 30 min | Colour India

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Positive LivingC. VAnAJA KumArI;

2007 | 30min | Colour India

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Autumn in the Himalayas mALGOrZATA SKIBA

2008 | 56min | Colour India

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Blood on my Hands SurABHI SArAL, mAnAK mATIYAnI AnD AnAnDAnA KAPur 2006 | 30min | Colour India

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Buru Gaara SHrIPrAKASH 2007 | 30min | Colour India

Sengadal LEEnA mAnImEKALAI

2007 | 102min | Colour India (Premiere)

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In a canvas spread over four decades, a banyan tree, on the banks of the lake Chilka, silently whispers tales of the lake and of fisherfolk, from the time when there was no export bazaar to the time when there may be no lake.

Students from Kanya Vidyalaya, an all-girls’ school at Vajreshwari, share poignant stories of how they joined the school and their dreams for the future. Along the way, the film looks at how a segregated, all-girls’ space is an extension of existing social norms, both enabling and restrictive.

The film documents the success story of a three hundred crore women’s cooperative- the Shri mahila Griha udyog Lijjat Papad- through the eyes of four key protagonists, their colleagues and their families and explores what it means to be part of this sisterhood.

The film reflects on the numerous silences that shroud the lives of young, educated, ‘independent’, ‘modern’, single women in urban India. Conversations with four such women reveal inner conflicts, dissonances and a crisis of identity.

Is piracy organized crime or class struggle? Are alternative artists who want to hold rights over their art and go it alone in the market, visionaries or nutcases? Is the fine line between plagiarism and inspiration a cop-out or a whole other way of looking at the fluid nature of authorship? Full of wicked irony, great music and thorny questions- metal heads who market their own music, folklorists who turn tribal aphorisms into short stories, music archivists who hoard and share everything they can get their hands on, anti-piracy fanatics who think piracy funds terrorism, a smooth talking DVD street salesman who outlines the efficiency of the illegal market, media moguls, lobbyists, “monetizers, downloaders, uploaders, the biggest

Chilka Banks-stories from India’s largest coastal lake AKAnKSHA JOSHI 2008 | 60min | Colour India

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Kanyashala GAnGA muKHI 2007 | 30min | Colour India

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The Lijjat Sisterhood KADAmBArI CHInTAmAnI / AJIT OOmEn 2003 | 30min | Colour India

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To Think Like a Woman ArPITA SInHA 2006 | 30min | Colour India

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Partners in CrimePArOmITA VOHrA 2011 | 94min | Colour India

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hit song of 2010 and the small time nautanki singer whose song it was inspired by – this f ilm explores the grey horizons of copyright and culture during times when technology is changing the contours of the market.

Subbalaxmi had no formal education- but a chance incident- her grandfather’s failing eyesight- led her to read the newspaper for him and paved a way for her to read and write in both Tamil and English. This early exposure to politics led to a lifelong engagement with the freedom struggle and the coming together of individual aspirations and collective struggles at a particular moment in India’s history.

What happens when it pours in the desert? Or when mangoes grow where there were oranges before. In villages across India, climate change is real and palpable. Over the last few decades, the weather is changing and so is a way of life. The changing climate affects not only livelihoods but cultures of entire communities. Folk songs about rain and nature take us through villages of rajasthan, madhya Pradesh, Tamil nadu and West Bengal. And voices of people allow us to witness the realities of climate change.

A Fragment of History umA CHAKrAVArTI 2010 | 42min | Colour India

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Oranges and Mangoes PrIYAnKA CHHABrA 2011 | 22min | Colour India

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