How does one show the ordinary, viscerally? How do you use the camera to reveal structures of power and, maybe,

even take back some power for ourselves? How does image-making help us negotiate, question and reflect on our differences? And as documentarians, how do we film caste? What do we show? What do we hide? Who has access? Who refrains?

 

Shot on mobile phone cameras in western Uttar Pradesh, the Film seeks to explore the positions of the two women, Rajkumari, a social activist from Lalitpur UP, and Ruchika, a documentary filmmaker and educator from New Delhi, within the stratified structure of caste.

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Second Best Documentary, Bengal International Short Film Festival

Dharamshala International Film Festival

International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, Trivandrum

IAWRT Asian Women's Film Festival, Delhi

Habitat Film Festival, Delhi

Cinévesture International Film Festival, Chandigarh

South Asian Short Film Festival, Kolkata

SiGNS Film Festival, Trivandrum

Indian Documentary Film Festival, Bhubaneswar

Social Justice Film Festival, Bangalore

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Rajkumari Prajapati is a social activist embedded in the grassroots women's collective, Sahjani Shiksha Kendra, in western Uttar Pradesh, for over two decades. She is also a part of the feminist think tank, The Third Eye's Learning Lab, an arts based pedagogical platform. She was one of the filmmakers in the collaborative film project, Raat (Night time in small time India), that has travelled to various national and international film festivals, university fora and cultural festivals since its release and won the Gender Sensitivity Award at the Dharamsala International Film Festival.

 

Ruchika Negi is a filmmaker, educator, and visual artist with an interest in arts based pedagogical practices. Some of her films include Malegaon Times, Every Time you tell a Story and Two Autumns in Wyszogrod. She has been awarded artistic residencies at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; PAV Centre for Contemporary Art, Turin and Khoj Studios, Delhi. She is also a recipient of the Charles Wallace Short Term Grant and a Research and Documentation grant from the India Foundation for the Arts. Her works have been exhibited at various festivals and art platforms, the most recent being the Kochi Muziris Biennale. She has been teaching documentary cinema in various universities and informal spaces and currently leads the Learning Lab, an arts based pedagogical platform of the feminist think tank, The Third Eye.

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Writers: Rajkumari Prajapati, Ruchika Negi

Cinematographers: Rajkumari Prajapati, Debankon Singh Solanky

Editors: Ruchika Negi, Gurleen Grewal

Sound: Ruchika Negi, Rajkumari Ahirwar, Asheesh Pandya

Collaborator: The Third Eye Learning Lab

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