Little Magazine Voices

Juxtaposing interviews, discussions, conversation and readings, ‘Little Magazine Voices’ creates a montage of content and opinion expressing the plural ethos that sustains little magazines. It observes a culture of intellectual creativity and curiosity allied to disciplined voluntary and collaborative work in a mode where commercial reward is not the goal. A ‘life of the mind’ flowing outside the banks of media and mainstream publishing.

Running Out of Time

Running Out of Time is a documentary on socio-economic conflicts in the newly created State of Jharkhand, the principal repository of India’s mineral wealth and home to tribal communities with a long history of political resistance. Set against the background of historic processes of misappropriation of tribal habitat and eco-sphere, the documentary explores their impact on tribal society with particular focus on village based movements aiming to establish tribal ownership over traditional resources of water, forest and land.

The Future of our Cities

Till about 50 years ago, the entire area to the east of the present day Kolkata’s Eastern Bypass, constituted the East Kolkata Wetlands, a remarkable man made ecosystem that sustainably recycles urban sewage and garbage. These wetlands still provide Kolkata with much of its fresh vegetables and fish, and are its most important source of lifesaving oxygen.

Dharamtalla Ka Mela

Shot mostly in 1979, before the 20th century started turning in to the 21st, Dharamtala Ka Mela keeps alive the lost world of a rural revival in the heart of the city, a Sunday haven where Kolkata’s non-Bengali rural migrants used to flock. The film portrays the fair’s daylong passage, the joys and susceptibilities of its rustic community: beliefs and practices, music, entertainment and skills. It unfolds as a ballad of the marginal yet essential journey of the rural migrant in the city.

Shape Feature - Documentary Maker

Profile

Formed in 1977, Shape is a communications development organisation specialised in print and audiovisual services. It supports a mix of large Corporations and Institutions, as well as small, medium enterprises and not for profit organisations. Over the years it has created advertising, collateral material and documentation for a wide range of products, services and projects. As a policy Shape periodically invests a portion of its business income to produce documentaries.

Contact

Shape

5 Garcha First Lane

Kolkata 700 019

Phone : 2461 3693, 2461 9114

email : shapecalcutta@gmail.com

Web : www.shapefeature.com

Little Magazine Voices
( Little Magaziner Katha )
2014
104 Minutes HD Video Bengali Language / English Subtitles
Also available in original Bengali language as Little Magaziner Katha

Juxtaposing interviews, discussions, conversation and readings, ‘Little Magazine Voices’ creates a montage of content and opinion expressing the plural ethos that sustains little magazines. It observes a culture of intellectual creativity and curiosity allied to disciplined voluntary and collaborative work in a mode where commercial reward is not the goal. A ‘life of the mind’ flowing outside the banks of media and mainstream publishing.

History is present only up to the emergence of the little magazine genre. The focus is on little magazines as they are today – poetry, short stories, cultural investigation, society and politics, linguistics, environment, health and science – a live sample of the astonishing variety of the little magazine oeuvre that is impossible to render in any single account.

The narrative uses no commentary and depends on interviews and live coverage of magazines at different points of preparing an edition; seeking to evoke the year-long continuum of little magazine activity and its multi-facetedness.

The countdown to getting an issue printed on schedule, or in time for the ‘Boi Mela’, provides a framework for portraying the love of literature and ideas, the socio-cultural commitment, the stretching of limited resources, and the last minute tensions that go into bringing out little magazines.

As a lively intermezzo, ‘Little Magazine Voices’ sketches in the three back-to-back Little Magazine Melas of the winter, recreating the December – January prime season of little magazine publishing.

Though a majority of the featured magazines are from the Kolkata region, the story travels to events, publications and personalities in Purulia, Bardhaman, Medinipur, and Jalpaiguri. 80 people – writers, publishers and readers, speak in the narrative.

Shape Feature - Little Magazine Voices
Shape Feature - Little Magazine Voices
Shape Feature - Little Magazine Voices
Shape Feature - Little Magazine Voices
Shape Feature - Little Magazine Voices
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Running Out of Time
( Ab Aur Waqt Nahin )
2007
103 Minutes Digital Video English Commentary / English Subtitles
Also avaiable in original Hindi languages as Ab Aur Waqt Nahin

Running Out of Time is a documentary on socio-economic conflicts in the newly created State of Jharkhand, the principal repository of India’s mineral wealth and home to tribal communities with a long history of political resistance. Set against the background of historic processes of misappropriation of tribal habitat and eco-sphere, the documentary explores their impact on tribal society with particular focus on village based movements aiming to establish tribal ownership over traditional resources of water, forest and land.

Running Out of Time locates the crisis of the adivasis of Jharkhand in the larger context of Jharkhand’s politicaland economic history, positing the indigenous Adivasi people and thier ecosystem against overwhelming national interventions that have carved out an industrial and urban ‘state’ in Jharkhand, fundamentally altering Jharkhand’s environment and demography.

From the viewpoint of the narrative the lack of accountability of these interventions, the Nation-State duality of Jharkhand, the sheer scale of environmental degradation, the conflicts in civil society, the failures of governance, abuse of human rights, the pauperization of the small cultivator are interconnected and cumulative in their effect.

In 5 of the 7 years after statehood, the Government has declared drought in Jharkhand. Running Out of Time argues that the adivasis of Jharkhand are on the verge of extinction as an agricultural people. If Adivasi agriculture ceases to be viable, Adivasi culture and society as we still know it will finally crumble.

Shape Feature - Running Out of Time
Shape Feature - Running Out of Time
Shape Feature - Running Out of Time
Shape Feature - Running Out of TimeShape Feature - Running Out of TimeShape Feature - Running Out of TimeShape Feature - Running Out of Time
Shape Feature - Running Out of Time
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The Future of Our Cities
Town Versas Country
1988
45 Minutes U matic Video English Commentary / English Subtitles

Till about 50 years ago, the entire area to the east of the present day Kolkata’s Eastern Bypass, constituted the East Kolkata Wetlands, a remarkable man made ecosystem that sustainably recycles urban sewage and garbage. These wetlands still provide Kolkata with much of its fresh vegetables and fish, and are its most important source of lifesaving oxygen.

What was 22,500 hectares in 1964, is perhaps no more 7500 hectares today, truncated by the footprint of new municipality and its townships. The Future of Our Cities sets East Kolkata’s past against its 1987 present, and zeroes in on a moment of truth in this one sided urban-rural conflict, posing the fate of a Fishermen’s Co-operative whose fisheries are about to be swallowed the city.

Shape Feature - The Future of Our Cities
Shape Feature - The Future of Our Cities
Shape Feature - The Future of Our Cities
Shape Feature - The Future of Our Cities
Shape Feature - The Future of Our Cities
Buy @ Amazon
Dharamtalla Ka Mela
1983
60 Minutes Eastmancolor English Commentary / English Subtitles

Shot mostly in 1979, before the 20th century started turning in to the 21st, Dharamtala Ka Mela keeps alive the lost world of a rural revival in the heart of the city, a Sunday haven where Kolkata’s non-Bengali rural migrants used to flock. The film portrays the fair’s daylong passage, the joys and susceptibilities of its rustic community: beliefs and practices, music, entertainment and skills. It unfolds as a ballad of the marginal yet essential journey of the rural migrant in the city.

The film’s events bring alive the human experience of the fair in candid and sometimes poignant detail. The musical track evokes and interacts with the fair’s rhythms and melodies. The practitioners and performers of the fair tell their stories and ply their ware. The fair still survives but it is a frayed shadow of its earlier self. Yet, it had thrived from the beginning of the last century as a tenacious city-country interface of pre-21st century India.

Shape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka Mela
Shape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka Mela
Shape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka Mela
Shape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka MelaShape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka MelaShape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka MelaShape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka MelaShape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka Mela
Shape Feature - Dharamtalla Ka Mela
Buy @ Amazon