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Our Family
56 mins., English , 2007,
Directed by K.P. Jayasankar and
Anjali Monteiro |
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What does it mean to cross that line which sharply divides us on the basis of gender? To free oneself of the socially imposed onus of being male, to liberate the female that lies within? In this film, scenes from Nirvanam, a one person performance in Tamil which explores these questions, are juxtaposed with an intimate portrait of three generations of trans-gendered female subjects, who are all bound together by ties of adoption. In the process, the film questions notions of normality and fixed gender identities
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Unheard Voices
27 mins., English , 2006,
Directed by K.P. Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro.
Co-produced by Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Norwegian Church Aid |
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Drawing on the testimonies of individuals who have been infected nosocomially with HIV/AIDS, the film aims to sensitise various groups to the risks involved in transmission of HIV through blood exposures, in the Indian context. This risk has been systematically underestimated. The film critically examines various unsafe health care and cosmetic practices. It questions the low perception of risks associated with unsafe blood exposures, which is due to misinformation about survival of the HIV virus outside the human body. There is also misinformation about the importance of the sexual route, based on unreliable data, myths about sexual transmission and morality. But the fact is that we do not know how much HIV is being spread through sex and how much through blood. Given this scenario, the film also attempts to create awareness about safe practices.
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SheWrite
55 mins, Tamil with English subtitles, 2005,
Directed by Anjali Monteiro and
K.P. Jayasankar |
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SheWrite weaves together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets. Salma negotiates subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a woman in a small town. For Kuttirevathi, solitude is a crucial creative space from where her work resonates. Her anthology entitled Breasts (2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and threats. This has been resisted by a group of poets and other artists who have formed an organization called Anangu (Woman). Malathy Maitri is a founder member of Anangu. Her poems attempt to explore and express feminine power. Sukirtharani writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in a way that affirms feminine empowerment and a rejection of male-centred discourse. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and transcendence.
Awards:
Best Documentary award at Muestra del IV Festival Tres Continentes del Documental (IV Three Continents International Festival of Documentaries) 2005, Venezuela
Indian Documentary Producers Association Awards 2005:? The First Technical Award for Sound Design and the Second Technical Award for Cinematography
Selected for Film Festivals:
12th International Women’s Film Festival), Turin, 2005
Film South Asia, Kathmandu 2005
Festival of Three Continents 2005, Venezuela
Platforma 2005, Athens
Ethnographic Film Festival of Montreal, Canada
Vibgyor Film Festival, Trichur, Kerala
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Naata (The Bond)
45 mins., English and Hindi versions, 2003,
Directed by K.P. Jayasankar and
Anjali Monteiro |
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Naata is about Bhau Korde and Waqar Khan, two activists and friends, who have been working with neighbourhood peace committees in Dharavi, reputedly, the largest slum in Asia. This film explores their work, which has included the collective production and use of visual media for ethnic amity. Naata is also about us; among other things, it is an attempt to reflect on how we relate to spaces of the other, spaces like Dharavi.
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Towards a people-centred
Tomorrow
28 mins., English , 2003,
Directed by B. Manjular |
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Traces the history and present contribution of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, a pioneering institution for social work education in South Asia. From its inception in 1936, the Institute has designed its programmes of training, research and field action to meet the emerging needs of the country with a focus on relevant and sustainable development goals.
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Saccha
49 Mins, English and Marathi versions,
2001, Directed by K.P. Jayasankar and
Anjali Monteiro |
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Saacha is about a poet, a painter and a city.
The poet is Narayan Surve, and the painter Sudhir Patwardhan. The city is the city of Mumbai (a.k.a. Bombay), the birth place of the Indian textile industry and the industrial working class. Both the protagonists have been a part of the left cultural movement in the city. Weaving together poetry and paintings with accounts of the artists and memories of the city, the film explores the modes and politics of representation, the relevance of art in the contemporary social milieu, the decline of the urban working class in an age of structural adjustment, the dilemmas of the left and the trade union movement and the changing face of a huge metropolis.
Awards
Second Prize, New Delhi Video Forum, 2001.
Selected for the following festivals:
Kalaghoda Film Festival, Mumbai, 2001
People's Film Fest, Bangalore, 2001
Film South Asia (FSA), Kathmandu, 2001
Travelling FSA 2001
Chingari, Wisconsin-Madison, 2001
Nottam, Kerala, 2001
Lahore Moving Images, 2002
Social Communication Cinema Festival, Calcutta, 2002
Mumbai International Film Festival, 2002
Some links:
Poetry, paintings & memories
This time, husband-wife duo Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar have been inspired to
... But for Saacha, apart from the production team, they also needed ... Read more...
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YCP 1997
43 Mins., English,1997,
Directed by K.P. Jayasankar and
Anjali Monteiror |
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Prison (YCP), Pune, is one of the oldest prisons in India, with over 2500 inmates. In this video, six poets and artistes of the YCP share their work, their lives...Through their poems and musings, the film explores the modes in which they creatively cope with the pain and stigma of incarceration, in the process questioning their selfhood and the socially constructed divides between 'us' and 'them', between the 'normal' and the 'deviant'.The poets and artistes who appear in this video are Harrison Cudjoe, a Nigerian poet who won an international award for his work, Ghanshyam Gupta, an Urdu poet, Kishore Ghodke, Sahebrao Phadtare and Santosh Shinde, who write in Marathi, and Dessi Franco Matwala, an Italian Tabla player. Rather than exploring their personal life histories and their crimes, the film seeks to represent the human condition as articulated by them. It is an attempt by us, the inmates of "larger prisons", to forge a link with the inmates of the "smaller prison" (as Harrison Cudjoe sees the prison and the outside world!)
Awards
Certificate of Merit, Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF)1998 and the Jury's Award for Best Innovation at the Astra Festival of Anthropological Documentary Film, Sibiu, Romania, 1998.
Press review
A sensitive documentary... India Today
An effort to bring forth the emotions and experiences (of the prisoners), but not as objects of curiosity... Asian Age
Picturising these sensitive subjects head on... Outlook
A strange world, both real and unreal at the same time, where time seems to have frozen... Times of India
A richly textured and finely nuanced film...The Hindu
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Kahankar: Ahankar
(Story maker: Story taker)
38 Mins., English and Marathi versions, 1995, Directed by K.P. Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro |
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This is an attempt at bringing together a selection of the stories and paintings of the Warlis, and some of the writings about `them'. To the Warlis, a community of Adivasis (indigenous peoples), who live close to Bombay, these stories represent their `history', their world-view. All the outsiders, the Portuguese, the Marathas, the British, the `native' settlers... they all tried obliterating this history and wisdom. The work of the outsiders who wrote about `the Warli' represents this process of creating new mythologies. By bringing together these disparate discourses, this video aspires to critique these mythologies... To read between the lines, as the stories themselves do.
Awards
Special Mention of theJury, Videovista, Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) 1996.
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Identity-
The construction of selfhood
21 Mins., English and Hindi versions, 1994,
Directed by K.P. Jayasankar and
Anjali Monteiro |
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Questioning the notion of the self as a pre-given, primordial and purposive entity, this video explores the gamut of modes in which identities are produced, circulated and consumed within the modern urban Indian culture. Identity is both difference and relationship; identity is enmeshed in relations of power, be they of gender, race or religion. Traversing a multi-cultural terrain inhabited by Paul Klee and the Indo-Anglian poet, A.K. Ramanujan, by popular television commercials and the writings of riot-affected children, by Michel Foucault and Sant Kabir, the medieval Sufi poet, the video is an invitation to examine anew our praxis of identity as a site of resistance and change.
Awards
Prix Futura Asia Prize, Prix Futura Berlin International Radio and Television Festival, 1995.
Second Prize in the Education & Literacy Category, International Video Festival for Science, Society & Development, Thiruvananthapuram,1995.
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