| art.description.project | Caste(ing) shadows on Distant Thunder
The Bengal Famine of 1943-44, which resulted in nearly four million deaths, is almost universally considered one of the most catastrophic and murderous instances of British colonial rule in India. The famine and the crisis ridden years of the 1940s gave rise to much compelling literature and art in Bengal but didn’t fully capture the profound sub-narratives and fault lines of caste, class, and gender that the famine had so brutally exposed. It is in this context that my video work Contracts of making, viewing and listening makes an intervention in Satyajit Ray’s film Distant Thunder. Distant Thunder is set in a village during World War II, and examines the effect of famine through the eyes of a Brahmin (upper caste) doctor-teacher-priest, Gangacharan, and his wife, Ananga. In Distant Thunder, Ray, long regarded as a great humanist director, brings forth Brahmin family’s subjectivity and never really provides the social critique of caste. In my video work, by centering the story of Moti, Dalit (low-caste) ‘friend’ of Ananga, I have attempted a cinematic intervention that is searching a method of enunciation of the marginalized other.
Taking my video work as an entry point, my presentation focused on politics of humanism, cinematic intervention and most importantly how do we approach the specificity of Dalit life-worlds without invoking sympathy. | sv |
