Salaam Bombay!

Salaam Bombay! 1988

7.23

After destroying his older brother's motorbike in retaliation for his constant bullying, 11-year-old Krishna is sent to a traveling circus to earn money to pay for the bike's repairs, but soon winds up in the streets of Bombay's poorest slums. There, he befriends the drug dealer Chillum and young prostitute Sola Saal, while trying to make enough money at a neighborhood tea stall to repay his debt to his family.

1988

Dharavi

Dharavi 1991

6.30

The film follows a scrappy taxi driver's fortunes as he tries to break out from the clutches of poverty, devising plans and investing all his money in a dubious schemes which eventually blow out on him, coming under the eye of unscrupulous politician and local goons, yet he still perseveres for his dreams.

1991

Naseem

Naseem 1995

7.00

Mumbai, 1992. Naseem, a 15 year-old schoolgirl, lives with her grandfather and grows up with stories of pre-independence communal harmony. Later, she helplessly watches the communal situation regression with the demolition of Babri Masjid.

1995

Brokering News: Media, Money and Middleman

Brokering News: Media, Money and Middleman 2011

1

The Film investigates the state of news in India. Journalism is up for sale and selling of editorial space has become both blatant and institutionalised.

2011

The Deliverance

The Deliverance 1981

6.20

When a poor and out-caste village tanner goes to village priest to get the date of his daughter's marriage fixed, the priest in turn asks for labor without pay in exchange.

1981

Sandhya Raagam

Sandhya Raagam 1989

10.00

Chokkalingam, an old man, moves out of town after his wife's death and goes to live with Vasu, his nephew in Chennai. However, Vasu struggles to bear the cost of an additional member in his family.

1989

Kakababu Here Gelen?

Kakababu Here Gelen? 1995

1

A detective Kakababu investigates a case where a very old bible of great value gets stolen by a criminal.

1995

Yathrayude Anthyam

Yathrayude Anthyam 1989

10.00

The film depicts a famous Malayalam writer's emotional relationship with an intellectual who leads the life of a simple farmer in a remote village. The story unfolds through the writer's bus journey to visit him.

1989

Mammo

Mammo 1994

5.20

Mammo is an account of a certain period in the life of Riyaz, a teenager who lives with his grandmother Fayyazi as they get a visit from his grandma’s sister Mehmooda Begum Anwar Ali, commonly known as ‘Mammo’.

1994

Karuvelam Pookkal

Karuvelam Pookkal 1996

8.00

Nallamuthu and Vadivu face several hardships due to the rising poverty and are forced to send their three children to work as child laborers.

1996

The Ebb Tide

The Ebb Tide 2019

1

Shot in the monsoon of 2018 in the Mirya creek in Maharashtra, the film records the unfolding of fishermen and fishing processes in the village of Mirya. It seeks to highlight some of the troubled and lived realities of the fishing community in the current times in an Indian village. The film is also a deliberation on the process of production of the film itself.

2019

Katha Doan Ganpatraonchi

Katha Doan Ganpatraonchi 1996

1

Located in a seaside village in Maharashtra during the 60s, the film unfolds over two decades. It is a tragic tale of how the best of friendships can rupture over a trivial quarrel. Once a rupture takes place, there are always people who know how to turn a quarrel to their own advantage, even if the main adversaries are completely destroyed in the process.

1996

Char Adhyay

Char Adhyay 1997

5.70

Set in the Bengali Renaissance of the 1930s and 1940s. A group of young intellectuals get embroiled in the struggle for Indian independence, sometimes at the expense of their personal lives.

1997

Certified Universal

Certified Universal 2009

1

An impressionistic sketch of ‘the public’ as created by our cinema and its relationship with cinema itself.

2009

The death of us

The death of us 2018

1

The debate on death penalty is loud and impassioned. Instead of echoing that cacophony, The Death of Us, quietly reflects on a range of cases in which the death penalty was pronounced. Sometimes, ending in the execution of the convicted; sometimes in commutation to a life sentence; and sometimes to acquittal and release. Speaking to some who have been on death row, and others closely involved with the cases, we engage in complex conversations on crime and punishment, revenge and justice, popular rhetoric and personal experiences. Only to find ourselves confronted by larger ethical and moral questions across time and space.

2018

Tarpan

Tarpan 1995

7.00

The film set in the 1940s, in a fictitious village in the Shekhavati region in Rajasthan, where no girl child survives beyond the age of seven. It deals with larger issues of communalism and caste system through four inter-related stories.

1995

Marattam

Marattam 1988

1

Panicker's one-act play deals with the relation of identification between an actor and his or her role. The action takes place on the eve of the last act of the Kathakali piece Keechakavadham (The Killing of Keechaka). The events surrounding the performance uncannily echo events in the play. One character even claims to have killed the lead actor of the play because he detested the character the man portrayed. However, the three different accounts that are presented of the same plot are never resolved or reconciled with each other. Each version is accompanied by a different style of folk music: the tune and rhythm of southern Kerala’s thampuran pattu, the pulluvan pattu and the ayappan pattu. The performers were drawn from the theatre and from Kathakali. In southern India, with its plethora of politicians using their film images to acquire inordinate wealth and power, Aravindan’s TV film bears on an eminently sensitive political as well as aesthetic issue.

1988

There is Something in the Air

There is Something in the Air 2011

1

As a call from the periphery of sanity, the film is a series of dream narratives, and accounts of spiritual possession as experienced by women 'petitioners' at the shrine of a Sufi Saint in North India.

2011