Documentaries

In partnership with Vikalp Film Archive

Short fiction: Ranga plays a girl, by RS Prasanna

Ranga is a 12 year old boy growing up in a south Indian village in the heart of India, circa 1970. His world is turned upside down when is forced to become the last-minute replacement for a part in Varadhu’s village play. The only problem:the role he has to play is that of a girl! In this rambunctious, laugh out loud short fiction film, we see, that maybe after all, Rang’s worst nightmare, turns out to be a literal blessing in disguise.

We Homes Chap

A unique Scottish Presbyterian home was founded by a missionary at the turn of the century in British India.It takes in orphans, mainly destitute Anglo-Indian children but also children of Tibetan refugees and other Himalayan people in strife. Grounded in old-fashioned colonial Cristian values, the school is a home for many who otherwise don’t  have one. But it is also a universe into itself.

For the eponymous Home Chaps, the institution is a surrogate parent, an anchor, a lifelong attachment. It is a love with an edge, a difficult love. Why that is is so what Tibetan filmmaker and Homes alumnus Kesang Tseten attempts to answer when he and his classmate of 29 years ago return to the’ Village for Children’ in the lap of the Kanchenjunga for the institution’s centennial celebrations. The film is a searing, yet lyrical, reflection on displacement marginalisation, nostalgia, the powerful hold of early experience and the nature of love.