Tag: medha kulkarni

Categories
Do

Baulish delights

A total fun weekend awaits Mumbai’s music lovers, as the Bauls of Bengal perform at various spots in the city.
by Medha Kulkarni

This weekend promises to be an absolute treat for music lovers across the city. From July 13 to 15, different locations across the city will play host to an introduction to the Bauls of Bengal with Lakshman Das Baul.

The word ‘Baul’ has its etymological origin in the Sanskrit words ‘Vatula’ (madcap), or ‘Vyakula’ (restless) and used for someone who is ‘possessed’ or ‘crazy’. The Bauls originally were a nonconformist people who rejected societal norms to form a sect where music was their religion. Baul is the name that is given to the genre of folk music developed by this sect.

baulsLakshman Das Baul is a disciple and the adopted son of renowned Baul master and composer Shri Shudhir Goshai of famous Joydev-Tamaltala Ashram in Birbhum District. He is a young performer well known for his magnificent energetic performances. He accompanies himself with Anandalahari and Dotara while he sings. He has performed in many parts of India. After the demise of Shri Shudhir Goshai, he has looked after the Joydev-Tamaltala Ashram, where he lives with his wife and son and the Mother (the companion of Shri Shudhir Goshai). He has been collaborating with the renowned master Parvathy Baul.

The music of the Bauls is not only a stunning art form, but is also an oral documentation of history as the Bauls are storytellers at heart. The nomadic people travel the country singing and performing and enthralling and entertaining, but it is an art that is unfortunately increasingly under the threat of extinction. This is a wonderful opportunity to experience this art and also to support it and ensure it’s survival.A rich repertoire of knowledge, this art promises to mesmerize it’s audience.

Here is the itinerary for this event :

July 13 7 pm to 8.30 pm, Vivekananda Auditorium, Ramakrishna Mission, and Khar West.

July 14 11 am to 12.30 pm, New Acropolis Centre, A-0 Connaught Mansions, opposite Colaba Post Office, Colaba AND 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm, Sangeet Mahabharti,10th Road, Opposite Amitabh Bachchan’s Bungalow, Juhu.

July 15 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm, Comet Media Foundation, 301 Meher House, 15 Cawasji Patel Street, Fort.

(Pictures courtesy ushaharding.blogspot.com, epaper.timesofindia.com)

Categories
Watch

Let the world in, today

Volume II of the two-part film project ‘To Let The World In’ will be screened at the Films Division today.
by Medha Kulkarni

‘To Let The World In’ is a project that revolves around a significant period in the history of contemporary Indian art over the last three decades. The film feature three generations of some of India’s most iconic artists who share ideas, memories and concerns about their work.

M F HussainVolume I was screened last week and Volume II showcases MF Hussain’s 1967 film Through The Eyes of a Painter. The conversations are intimate and the interviews are conducted by renowned art historian and curator Chaitanya Sambrani, and have been filmed by Avijit Mukul Kishore. The works are a visual documentation of some of the most important moments in Indian art history from the 1980s to the present day. Volume II explores the changing contexts in art production and the connections between art and political history and the evergreen questions of patronage and recognition.

The film starts with the volatile context of art practice when India was on the brink of economic liberalisation juxtaposed against the re-assertion of religious fundamentalism in Indian politics. The artists featured in this volume are Anju Dodiya, Archana Hande, Benitha Perciyal, Sharmila Samant, Parvathi Nayar, Riyas Komu, Tushar Joag, Shilpa Gupta, Josh PS, Gargi Raina, Sumakshi Singh, TV Santhosh, Nataraj Sharma, Anandajit Ray, Gigi Scaria, Reena Saini Kallat and Jitish Kallat.

The screening will be followed by a Q & A session panelled by Abhay Sardesai, art critic and the editor of Art India Magazine.

The film was produced by Art Chennai, to accompany the show ‘To Let The World In: Narrative and Beyond in Contemporary Indian Art’, curated by Chaitanya Sambrani, held in Chennai in 2012.

Head to RR Theatre, 10th floor, Films Division, Pedder Road, at 4 pm.

(Pictures courtesy www.thenational.ae, gulfnews.com)

Categories
Achieve

The artist of the opera

Mumbai’s Ratnadeep Adivrekar is the first Indian artist to exhibit his work at Wagner’s magnified opera in Germany, this month.
by Medha Kulkarni

It is said that when art beckons, all one can do is follow it.

Ratnadeep in his studio This was certainly the case with Goregaon-based artist Ratnadeep Gopal Adivrekar. The son of two artists, Ratnadeep (39) grew up in a home surrounded by art, and rebelled against it by opting to study Science instead. He pursued the subject determinedly until one day, in a sudden moment of clarity, he realised that all he wanted to do was paint. Since that day Ratnadeep has not looked back.

His journey as an artist began in 1997 and the road came with its ups and downs. However, Ratnadeep relentlessly pursued his art and today he is poised to become the first Indian artist to exhibit at the internationally celebrated Wagner’s magnified opera.

The exhibition consists of 16 works (see two examples below left and right), 10 of which are oils on canvas and the rest are charcoal and acrylic works. The works will travel to different cities in Germany for three weeks before being housed in the permanent collection at the Wagner Museum on July 19. The oil paintings represent iconic scenes from Wagner’s most celebrated operas and the charcoal and acrylic works try to paint a picture of the man himself, his life and the magic that has kept his works alive.

One of Ratnadeep's works to be shown at GermanyWhen asked what the most challenging part about working with his chosen medium was, he said, “Oils are suitable for large works, but the advantage of working with oils is also its disadvantage. The idea has to be pre-determined. One cannot go with the flow as is the case with charcoal and acrylics. However, with charcoal and acrylics, there is no room for error. One wrong brushstroke, and I have to start from scratch.”

It took one and half years of gruelling work to make this exhibition a reality. Ratnadeep spent some time in Germany, studying Wagner’s works. He also went to several operas and met with distinguished opera conductors to understand the nuances of an opera. “Western music is very different from Indian music, but Wagner’s operas have a lot of themes which are common to the Mahabharata as well, and that’s where I drew my inspiration from,” he says. Wagner operas were inspired by Nordic tales and the themes of love, power, greed etc. are common to those as well as the Mahabharata.

The conceptual style of the works shows layering and this reflects the multi-layered nature of Wagner’s operas themselves. Synthesia means a direct visual translation of music into paintings. “I didn’t experiment with synthesis as it tends to create very subjective work. I wanted my works to be accessible by a broad cross-section of viewers,” explains Ratnadeep.

According to him, the Wagner show is his “greatest artistic achievement to date”. The most challenging part, he elaborated, about working on this imageshow was the pan-cultural association. However, the works have been received well and he’s looking forward to the opening of the show on July 19.

On being asked if he would do more shows based on music he laughed and said, “No. Not for a long time at least.” Ratnadeep also has a solo show at the Tao Art Gallery in Mumbai later this year.

(Pictures courtesy Ratnadeep Gopal Adivrekar)

Categories
Film

Go for the Terrence Malick film festival

One of the world’s greatest living filmmakers is being feted for a day, today, at Peddar Road. Don’t miss it.
by Medha Kulkarni

Lovers of good cinema in this city have another reason to rejoice. This weekend sees the Terrence Malick film festival at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture, Peddar Road.

Terrence-MalickHailed as one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers, Terrence Malick stands apart from others in being a filmmaker-philosopher whose films are simultaneously beautifully impressionistic and hauntingly profound. Malick is a Rhodes Scholar and a teacher at the prestigious MIT and his films are a spellbinding visual experience and traverse the field of questions about existence, god and nature. With a visual and narrative style that is consistent throughout his entire body of work, he works with an enigmatic approach to narrative and character, innovative voice overs and a subtle juxtaposition of natural beauty with violence and an almost poetic investigation into dreams and nightmares.

With a career spanning over four decades, he has made only seven films, being a ruthless pursuer of perfection in his work. The one day festival will showcase three of his best works, namely To The Wonder, Days Of Heaven (in pic above) and Tree Of Life.

The festival has been organised by the Enlighten Society, an arts and media organisation based in Mumbai.

You can get more information about the festival and about the Enlighten Society here or on their Facebook page. Book tickets for the festival here. 

(Pictures courtesy andrewsidea.wordpress.com, www.anomalousmaterial.com)

Categories
Cinema@100

Hundred years in three days

Rare Indian films will be screened in their original format at Films Division, Mumbai, starting today to Sunday, June 30. Be there if you love Indian cinema.
by Medha Kulkarni

Who doesn’t love our movies, right?

And some of our films have been the highest of successes riding on the fact that they were daring experiments. While some tanked, or were appreciated years later, most were recognised and hailed for their genius.

If you revel in experimentation and love the movies, you should head to Films Division today for a three-day retrospective of Indian Cinema. The event is titled ‘Hundred Years of Experimentation (1913-2013)’ and will be conducted by film scholar and anthropologist Ashish Avikunthak along with documentary film maker Pankaj Rishi. The duo will attempt to add a historical perspective to the contemporary debate to celebrate a 100 years of Indian cinema.

Raja-HarishchandraWorks that are “not driven by the desire to just produce an aesthetic artifact but rather to create a discursive field,” have been specifically chosen by the two film experts. According to the press release for the event, “The films challenge modernity by opening up a conversation with Indian history, tradition, culture and religion.”

Several films categorised under various heads will be showcased. It starts with Dadasaheb Phalke’s 1913 silent mythological Raja Harishchandra under the heading ‘Experiments with Gods’ and was chosen since the film effectively catapulted “modernity and tradition into a cinema of religiosity – a dominant form of cinema of the silent era.”

The second category ‘Experiment in the state’ will showcase films produced by S Sukhdev and Tyeb Mehta. ‘Experiment in the school’ will showcase the works of Ritwik Ghatak and his students at Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) which include diploma films by Kuntal Bhogilal, Rajan Khosa and Satyajit Ray.

Alongside these, documentary films by the likes of Pallavi Paul and SNS Sastry and short films by Ashim Ahluwalia, Natasha Mendonca and animation (co-curated by Nina Sabnani) will also be screened. Mortimer Chatterjee of Chatterjee and Lal will co-curate the section on video and installation featured in contemporary art galleries over the past 10 years and which includes works by artists Nikhil Chopra, Hetain Patel, Sahej Rahal, Nalini Malani, and Kiran Subbaiah.

The festival is on from today, June 28 to Sunday, June 30. It will close with a round table discussion between the curators and film makers.

Entry is free. Head to RR Theatre, Films Division, Peddar Road, Mumbai. 

(Pictures courtesy dearcinema.com)

Categories
Watch

Rape of the flock

Film to be screened today discusses how American soldiers are raped by fellow personnel, and how the establishment plays cover-up.
by Medha Kulkarni

invisible-war-These news items come to the fore on and off and are discussed widely for a while before being buried under other, more urgent news. It is a worrying statistic that a female soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan is more likely to be brutally raped than killed or injured by enemy fire.

A documentary, The Invisible War, will be screened by Vikalp tonight at Prithvi House, Juhu, today (see below for details). Directed by Oscar and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick, the film is “a searing expose of the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the US military, the institutions that perpetuate and cover up its existence, and its profound personal and social consequences.”

The Invisible War was the recipient of the 2012 US Documentary Audience Award at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

American defence personnel, both men and women, who have dedicated their lives to the service of their nation are being raped and sexually assaulted by their own fellow soldiers, commander and officers – the very people whose job is to protect and guide them, rather than by the enemy force.

The film centers on the stories and experiences of Military Sexual Trauma survivors with the courage to come forward, tell their stories, and let us into their lives. Kirby Dick’s strong belief and main motivation behind making this film was that it would “shed light on these heinous acts and the larger systemic issue. The film intends not only to bring much-needed attention to this disturbing issue but also to stimulate the public to demand for legislation to protect the next generation from the horrors of sexual assault and the lifelong trauma that follows.”

The film screening will be followed by a talk by Sana Contractor (Research Officer at Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT). CEHAT, an NGO, is involved in research, training, service and advocacy on the issue of rape and allied themes. Joining her will be Robin Chaurasiya (of Kranti, an NGO that empowers girls from Mumbai’s red-light areas to become agents of social change.)

Get more details on the film here. The film will be screened today, June 24, at 7 pm at Prithvi House, opposite Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu Church Road, Juhu, Mumbai. Entry is free but on a first-come-first-seated basis.

Exit mobile version