“On
December 16, India became the headline on all the recognized
International newspapers and bulletins,
for her daughter Jyoti Singh. Jyoti (age 23) was brutally beaten and
gang-raped and finally died. The media attention and the public
discourse reached a crescendo around this horrific event. Well,
it was not a one-off case of sexual violence, but it did circulate
the term ‘rape-culture’ in the public discourse.Everyone
was talking about Rape and sexual misbehaviors, even my 11 years old
son. Only few days back he attended the
maturation curriculum here in the US, the curriculum which is almost
nonexistent in India. The teachers asked me whether we have such
awareness programs in Indian schools too. I said “No"
and fumbled.” (Anamika Bandopadhyay on her project The Third
Breast)
There
is no need to repeat what can be read on her excellent Indiegogo Crowd funding
page. For a better understanding of this film project, the whole page should be read.
How I came in touch with the films by Anamika Bandopadhyay?
How I came in touch with the films by Anamika Bandopadhyay?
It
was on Facebook when I posted a link to my English translation of my
text on Ritwik Ghatak´s trilogy on the partition of Bengal. I think it was around 2011, where she gave some very interesting and insightful comments on Ritwik Ghatak. Some
times later I realized that we share as well our admiration for
Bengali film maker Aparna Sen. Two years ago, I finally had the luck to watch two of her films, 1700 Kelvin from 2012 and Red from 2008,
a film which deals with this Nandigram -protest ( a Human Right issue which remained nearly unknown out of India) in which she was
involved. “
Involved “ is probably a good key word for the work
of Anamika Bandopadhyay. As she often introduces herself as a
lecturer, filmmaker and social activist – all these aspects are inseparable in her work. Both of these films include excerpts from
filmy by Ritwik Ghatak. Like Ghatak she actually does not just make films
“about someone or something” from a safe distance. The disturbing
images we see don´t seem to be filtered through the neutrality of
the image making apparatus. She is not an observer anymore but
participating.
In
her film Red, the cinematic chronicle of her experience with the
Nandigram issue, there are some scenes, interviews with two women,
abused by the police of the former left government of the CPM of West
Bengal. While these women, one is a Muslim, the other a Hindu are
telling from a nightmare of violence and humiliation, we see the
filmmaker beside them. She always touches them to console them and
when one of the woman begins to cry she even hugs her. That is a
quite beautiful and compassionate gesture in the middle of a nearly
apocalyptic environment. These moments are hunting me from the moment I saw this film. So I never really regretted to have compared
these moment with magical and moving moment in a film by Terrence
Malick which means a compassion which is sensible in every atom of this film.
Another
film I saw only in an excerpt because it is not available in its full length but there
is on YouTube a 5 minutes excerpt from her film Rough Cut. I don´t
even know what the whole film is about but I was mesmerized by these 5
minutes. An adolescent girl in a Hindu temple in front of the statue
of a naked goddess. It seems the girl is measuring the body of this
statue of a goddess and compares it with her own. As this moment
tells about nothing else but of two bodies, a living one who is just
in its puberty and an artificial one, it seems to me like a prayer to the results of the creation.
Even
though it is a very quiet scene, we always get an idea that in
this moment we discover our body the violence of ideologies and
oppressions of some thousand years of human civilisation will invade
our mind. It seems to me like a meditation on the beauty of our physical existence so often denied in nearly all religions and most of any ideologies.
These 5 minutes alone are reason enough to be excited about Anamika
Bandopadhya´s new project The Third Breast. After all what I heard
and read about this project, it looks like her most ambitioned project to
date – and after all what I have read and heard about The Third
Breast, it will be much more than a documentary but also a poetic
film essay about how the beauty of our physical experience and how it became contaminated through a complex of powers and its ideologies.
Among
so much young filmmakers I came across, there is one more thing I
love in the work of Anamika Bandopadhyay. We will never find any kind of
“manifestos” in her talking about cinema and always more than "filmed ideas" Her work is a kind of
quest for something which is essential for cinema, like Godard said "films on the visible things of the world".
Another
of so many exciting aspects of this film project is the involvement
of one of India´s finest cinematographers Sunny Joseph.
The
film might be obvious about one of the most important subject of
contemporary India. That will offer a lot of stuff for discussions.
But the feeling I have after all what I read and heard about this
project, I expect also a unique cinematic treatment of this subject,
a treatment which does not work with an ideological predetermination
but with a sensual and poetic search for the truth.
Crowd funding
campaigns and the growing number of platforms for this kind of film
funding might be caused by difficulties to find a producer or funder
but they offer as well a possibility to support and promote projects
which are outside the mainstream and often outside of the specific
trends and fashions of the so-called Independent Cinema.
I supported
some crowd funded projects in the past but concerning The Third
Breast it is one of the most important projects I ever supported and
I don´t regret any cent and any minute of time I dedicated for supporting this project. The reason is just that I believe in this film and if I
have to mention some names of filmmakers which deserve a broader
recognition than Anamika Bandopadhyay is one of the first names which
come to my mind.
So
please take a proper look at her project The Third Breast which
deserves all the support it needs. You will find extended
informations under following links:
The
crowd funding Campaign goes until August, 10, 2014.
Rüdiger
Tomczak
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