re:assemblage collective

― DIFFUSION 8 ―

Originally screened Aug. 30, 2022 at 401 Richmond Courtyard

From 1981 through 1983 Yugantar, feminist film collective from India, developed four projects together with existing or ensuing women’s groups around the country. These included films with women factory workers in Nipani (TAMBAKU CHAAKILA OOB ALI) and with members of the Chipko environmental movement (SUDESHA), presented in this program. Rich synergies between their activist and creative practices mark Yugantar’s films as a potent chapter of feminist filmmaking, inspiring reflections on political friendship and other modes of contemporary co-existence. Presenting a selection of their timely works, recently restored by Arsenal Distribution, Berlin.

TAMBAKU CHAAKILA OOB ALI / TOBACCO EMBERS · 1982 SUDESHA · 1983

TAMBAKU CHAAKILA OOB ALI / TOBACCO EMBERS

India · 1982 · 26'00

TAMBAKU CHAAKILA OOB ALI documents, re-enacts, and takes forward one of the largest movements of unorganized labor of its time and context, which sparked unionizing processes across India throughout the 1980s. In the spirit of mobilizing for the leftist labor and the women’s movements the Yugantar collective spent four months with female tobacco factory workers in Nipani, Karnataka in India, listening to their accounts of exploitative working conditions, discussing strategies for unionizing and steps to broaden solidarities for strike actions, and filming previously unseen circumstances inside the factories. The team followed the workers’ leads as to what, where, and how their actions should be recorded, and developed a loose script through the workers’ narratives. Yugantar’s commitment to the complexity of political friendships and how to ‘stand with’ provoked a then pioneering collaborative filmmaking practice embodied in large scale reenactments, a voice-over as pluriverse testimony, and the production of the first screen presence of working-class women ‘speaking to power’.

SUDESHA

India · 1983 · 33'00

Yugantar was founded by Deepa Dhanraj, Abha Bhaiya, Navroze Contractor, and Meera Rao in 1980. Between 1980 and 1983, during a time of radical political transformation in India, Yugantar created four pioneering films together with existing or ensuing women’s groups. [↗]