Experimenta - New Cinema from India

ENROUTE OR OF A THOUSAND MOONS
A film by Ayisha Abraham
8mm to digital, 2011, 20 min.

At the heart of Enroute or of a Thousand Moons are 3-inch 8mm reels of found footage — fragments of film, like silent roadside pebbles, their histories blurred by time. As light streams through the projector, these buried images flicker to life like ghosts conjured by a magic lantern. The film draws from mid-20th century visuals of modern life and travel, both within and beyond postcolonial India. It centres on amateur filmmakers who captured everyday life and unfamiliar cultures through a personal gaze — offering an intimate glimpse into the past. The film's plastic and emulsion become host to fungus — a reminder that non-human forces also shape history.

I AM MICRO
A film by Shumona Goel & Shai Heredia
35mm to digital, 2012, 15 min.

Shot in the passages of an abandoned optics factory and centered on the activities of a low-budget film crew, I Am Micro is an experimental essay about filmmaking, the medium of film, and the spirit of making independent cinema.

NO STRANGER AT ALL
A film by Priya Sen
Digital, 2022, 40 min.

For two years starting in 2020, this work has tried to find language for and ways across, the bizarre upheavals of social and political values with the rise of fascism in India and a global pandemic. Filmed in Delhi, these incomplete fictions are of the people, places, and protests that keep the language of hatred at bay and absorb the city’s grief and euphoria. In them, are the continuous echoes of a violent and tenuous present. There is a shadowy sense of a protagonist who un-dreams it all; a stranger, who turns out, is no stranger at all.