Exploring the Real: Film Workshop
Exploring the Real: Space, Place and Representation in the Image
Facilitated by Sameera Jain and Radhamohini Prasad
“Our true reasons for practicing will colour the results of our practice.”
–Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
Does the filmmaking process unravel questions on how we represent the world around us? This workshop attempts to understand and explore this. We welcome anybody curious about the process of making films. The workshop does not require technical skills and is suitable for all.
Five days of viewing, discussing, wandering and filming (stills and video on our mobile phones), in search of a clean slate to begin thinking about Form and Content in cinema. Form and Content are two distinct aspects that reside in the visual medium. The Form is the visual relationship among cinematic elements used to convey the Contents of a story. The workshop will take you though the relation between and affect they have on each other.
The sessions will lightly touch upon cinema history and theory and explore personal, social, cultural and political intersections. The focus will be on process and experimentation, rather than a finished product. Hence, you will be provided with a methodology that draws upon our day-by-day understandings accumulated in the locations we engage with.
For each participant, there will be a continuum that allows for tracking their own journey. This will be an incremental process that creates a space for possibilities of new ideas and partnerships. And with this, other directions and strands will open out that can connect to creative work taken on by the participants in the future.
These are some of the questions we will address in the workshop:
What visual representations arise from the questions we ask ourselves and what unravels when we try to respond afresh and move away from the formulaic?
What is worthy of representation?
What are the ethics and aesthetics involved?
What questions about form and content open out in this process?
The days will consist of—
– taking stills, filming on mobile phones
– observational exercises, writing
– film viewing, discussion
– analysing the ways we express ourselves through the visual medium
– expository sessions with the mentors
Schedule
September 12 –September 16
Session One: 10:00 am – 12:00 pm (with tea break)
Lunch Break: 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Session Two – 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm (with breaks)
Registration Fee: Rs. 1000 | Limited scholarships available for students | No technical skills required |
About the Facilitators—
Sameera Jain has been editing and directing films, as also involved with diverse aspects of filmmaking practice. Her work has been exhibited widely. Participation in film juries and curriculum formulation have been part of her engagement. She’s been teaching and mentoring at several platforms and institutions including her alma mater, the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). She has a sustained interest in structuring pedagogic practice which pushes the boundaries of non-fiction and interrogates accepted codes around it, moving into the experimental. In 2013, she initiated and has been Course Director, Creative Documentary Course, SACAC, New Delhi.
Radhamohini Prasad is a filmmaker from Kalimpong. She was a resident filmmaker at the Critical Art & Media Practices (Mumbai), the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bangalore) and a visiting faculty at the Creative Documentary Course, SACAC (New Delhi). In 2013, as a Fellow of the Unbox Fellowship Programme (New Delhi), she was a co-recipient of the AHRC Booster Fund Pitch for Law Digital, an experimental digital cartography project. Her film Machis Ko Sinka screened at Film South Asia (Kathmandu) and SIGNS: John Abraham National Award Festival (Trivandrum). Her birthplace and its circumstances have greatly influenced and shaped her work.