Film Archive

Jahr

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A Night of Knowing Nothing

A Night of Knowing Nothing
Payal Kapadia
Camera Lucida – Out of Competition 2021
Documentary Film
France,
India
2021
96 minutes
Hindi,
Bengali
Subtitles: 
English

Riots and protests at an Indian film school, told in letters written by student L to her lover K, in which she reflects on what’s happening around her. While government forces gradually push back the rebellion, L realizes that she will never receive an answer because K belongs to a higher caste. The anonymous lines are wistful echoes of a love tragedy in times of the resurgence of a nationalistic class society.

Director Payal Kapadia steeps the visual material, compiled from a variety of sources and testifying to long, draining nights of protest, but also to great determination and a youthful exuberance, almost consistently in grainy black and white. Even mobile phone or surveillance camera footage are thus aesthetically related to 16mm student films from past decades. But against this contrast the immediate, unfinished nature of what is shown becomes all the more apparent, referencing the complex dialogue between a fragile memory and a tumultuous present that goes on in the film. A present in which questions of artistic representation, but also of personal responsibility, must be renegotiated.
Felix Mende

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Payal Kapadia
Script
Payal Kapadia, Himanshu Prajapati
Cinematographer
Ranabir Das
Editor
Ranabir Das
Producer
Thomas Hakim, Julien Graff, Ranabir Das
Sound
Moinak Bose, Romain Ozanne
World Sales
Wouter Jansen
Filmstill Moonless

Moonless

Chandraheen
Adheep Das
International Competition Animated Film 2023
Animated Film
India
2023
24 minutes
Hindi
Subtitles: 
English

On a moonless night, a cheeky bull escapes from his herd. He dashes through fields and over hills until he finally stops at a pond, where a piece of paper on which a poem is emerging attaches itself to him. The bull shakes off the paper and sneaks into town, where he watches people at their nocturnal business. He witnesses a police investigation, listens in on two truck drivers and observes the theft of a bus stop shelter. All these experiences are accompanied by the narrator’s poetic comments and culminate in a hilarious singing sequence, complete with a dance and performance number by the bull.

Meanwhile, the people in the town are in an uproar about the undetectable moon. They search, discuss and protest. But the moon stays missing – until the bull transforms himself at the end of his journey.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Adheep Das
Script
Avanti Basargekar
Editor
Adheep Das
Producer
Tamali Bhattacharya
Sound
Shivpal Singh Kang
Sound Design
Shivpal Singh Kang
Score
Shivpal Singh Kang
Animation
Adheep Das
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award