പേജുകള്‍‌

Friday, August 10, 2012

The Lightning Testimonies(2007)

The Lightning Testimonies(2007)
Director: Amar Kanwar
Country:India
Runtime:113 min

 Why is one image different from the other? Why does an image seem to contain many secrets? What can release them so as to suddenly connect with many unknown lives.

The Lightning Testimonies reflects upon a history of conflict in the Indian subcontinent through experiences of sexual violence. As the film explores this violence, there emerge multiple submerged narratives, sometimes in people, images and memories, and at other times in objects from nature and everyday life that stand as silent but surviving witnesses. In all narratives the body becomes central - as a site for honour, hatred and humiliation and also for dignity and protest. As the stories unfold, women from different times and regions come forward. The film speaks to them directly, trying to understand how such violence is resisted, remembered and recorded by individuals and communities. Narratives hidden within a blue window or the weave of a cloth appear, disappear and are then reborn in another vocabulary at another time. Using a range of visual vocabularies the film moves
beyond suffering into a space of quiet contemplation, where resilience creates a potential for transformation

Amar Kanwar is an independent film-maker whose lyrical and meditative work explores the political, social, economic and ecological conditions of the Indian subcontinent. Having directed and produced over 40 films, which are a mixture of documentary, poetic travelogue and visual essay, much of Kanwar’s work traces the legacy of decolonisation and the partition in 1947 of the Indian subcontinent into Islamic Pakistan and Hindu India. Recurrent themes are the splitting of families, sectarian violence and border conflicts, interwoven with investigations of gender and sexuality, philosophy and religion, as well as the opposition between globalisation and tribal consciousness in rural India.

Kanwar’s compelling films are created using image, ritual objects, literature, poetry and songs. Rather than focusing on traumatic or political situations, he attempts to move beyond trauma and its direct representation to a more contemplative space. He experimented with this strategy in his most celebrated film, A Season Outside, 1998, exploring the border tensions along the thin white line between India and Pakistan. Scripted and narrated by the artist, the work is a personal journey and poignant meditation on the philosophies of violence and non-violence.

Along with his numerous single screen films, Kanwar has also developed multi-screen video installations, in which projected films are choreographed to create sophisticated layering of image and meaning within a conscripted space. In The Lightning Testimonies, 2007, he reflects upon a history of conflict in the Indian subcontinent through experiences of sexual violence, especially in the wake of the political unrest that followed the Partition, where 75,000 women were abducted and abused. Eight synchronised projections present disparate narratives that converge. Women from different times and regions come forward as stories are revealed through people as well as through the images and objects that survive as silent witnesses.

The Lightning Testimonies explores how such violence is resisted, remembered and recorded and moves beyond the realm of suffering into a space of quiet contemplation, where resilience creates the potential for transformation. Beyond its immediate subject matter, the work also examines the contrasting methodologies and vocabularies used by different individuals and communities for archiving and recalling memory.

Kanwar’s latest work is a three-part installation, The Torn First Pages, 2008-, which examines the political and humanitarian situation in Burma and the struggle between dictatorial regime and the Democracy Movement. The title of the work is related to the story of a bookshop owner in Mandalay in the mid-1990s accused and subsequently convicted and imprisoned for tearing out the first page of every book he sold. The extracted pages were printed with a legally required slogan of the military regime and a denunciation of democratic forces. His action thus represented a private yet powerful resistance against the repressive authorities, pertinent to the artist’s experience of Burma. The Torn First Pages: Part I, a five-channel projection onto paper sheets, presents films shot clandestinely in Burma, India, Europe, the US and Thailand where Kanwar located exiled Burmese communities. Independent stories are connected by a metaphorical reference to the struggle for a democratic society, exile, memory and individual courage.