GUMNAAM DIN | 27 mins | Video | 2020
Gumnaam Din is a film about missing days from the calender; of missing people who left to faraway cities for work. Gumnaam Din situates itself in a season of waiting, climate of uncertainty: where only a loud screech or impenetrable silences can register the distance between loved ones. Guided by Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s birha poetry, Gumnaam Din explores yearnings, both from the perspective of the missing and those who wait endlessly for them. Will they be found? Do they want to return? Gumnaam Din explores these days of obscurity, escape and abandonment, in everyday life.
BIRHA | 1 hr 21 mins | Video | 2017
Birha is a solo project that started in 2017. In a faraway village called birha, missing people, mothers and tired lovers yearn to see beyond the mist. They meet each other in impenetrable silences and endless mourning. They curse the moon for witnessing their insomnias. birha situates itself in a season of waiting, climate of uncertainty: where only a loud screech can register distance between loved ones.
birha is the grief, agony and anguish of separation, derived from Punjabi Sufi Poetry. Guided by Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s birha poetry, the film captures the pain, lamentation and yearning caused by separation. The film searches for missing people, who left their homes to work in faraway cities, and have still have not returned. The locations are not marked, characters are not named, birha situates itself in a season of waiting and a climate of uncertainty.
DISTANCE | 38 mins | Video | 2013
A far away village set amidst a growing metropolis where workers narrate stories of love and longing.
PRESENCE | 17 mins | Video | 2012
Ghost stories narrated by workers amidst a rapidly transforming city.
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE | 21 mins | Archival Footage | 2013
This film made from the archival material of the National Labour Archive and rushes of Behind the Tin Sheets Project. This was made possible with the Archival fellowship, supported by India Foundation of the Arts.
Screened at the All India Labour Historians Conference, 2013
A VERY OLD MAN WITH WINGED SANDALS | 18 mins | Archival Footage | 2013
This film that points Comrade Anil Kumar Rai’s ideas and philosophies. AK Rai played a key role in organizing workers, farmers and adivasis to fight for an independent Jharkhand. He started the Bihar Colliery Kamdar Union with the coal miners in Jharkhand to fight against the mafia in late 1960s, which is active to date. The film explores the complexity of the lives of coal miners prone to disasters and accidents, one being the Chasnala Mine Incident in 1975, where more than 350 coal miners drowned, when a lake broke into the mine. The film is made from the archival material of the National Labour Archive and photographs of coal miners in Jharkhand by Javed Iqbal.
All India Labour Historians Conference, 2013
Asia Film Focus 2017, Time Machine, Objectifs, Centre for Photography and Film, Singapore, 2017