Documentaries

In partnership with Vikalp Film Archive

The other cinema: special tribute to the late Saratchandran.

The activist-filmmaker C. Sartchandran passed away in April in a tragi accident. This will be a special tribute screening in his memory.

We will look another cinema that exists at the grassroots-in Kerala. A cinema made about the people’s issues and with the people’s collaboration. A traveling cinema taken to the people in outdoor screenings in vilages, towns and cities, starting from the Odessa film movement in Plachimada.

We will look at glimpses of films made by Saratchandran from various political film he made- especially on the determined and successful anti-Coca Cola movment in Plachimada.

Anand Patwardhan will introduce the audience to the woork and political philosophy of Saratchandran.

Yours Truly John

Although the revolutionary Malyalam filmmaker John Abraham (1937-1987) made only four films, mos t famous among them AmmaAriyan, he left a lagacy that reshaped film culture in Kerala.

It was under his leadership that the Odessa Collective came into existence in 1984-a group of movie enthusiasts seeking to change the history of film production and distribution by making it a collaborative effort with the public. AmmaAriyan was produced by collaborations from people, sometimes as little as one rupee, long before there was facebook and internet fundraising-just the idea of political passion and the belief in an alternative.

Featuring extensive, rare archival footage, Yours Truly John, traces the life of an artist who lived a life both visionary and anarchic, diying young. Those who knew him, and those who were part of the Odessa Collective relive their experiences and talk about the philosophy that underlay this movement. Through them we understand something of the cult that was John Abraham, but also see the shaping of vibrant alternative cinema culture that took root in Kerala and continued to thrive in the work of many, including the director of this fulm: C.Saratchandran