Programme
Koodal (India, 1970, dir Tyeb Mehta, 15 mins, Hindi with English subtitles)
Commissioned by the state body Films Division of India, modernist painter Tyeb Mehta channels the nightmares of the nation through provocative montage sequences in his first and only film Koodal, which is a Tamil word for 'meeting point'. A public square could become an abattoir, a fairground crowd could slip out of control at any moment, and men and cattle are ushered alike in familiar yet uncanny motions.
The Lost Head & the Bird (India, 2019, dir Sohrab Hura, 10 mins, English)
Comprising surreal images he captured along India’s coastline, Sohrab Hura builds this film around a narrative conceit: a woman has lost her head and she keeps buying a crow from a fortune-teller who convinces her that it’s just a parrot with a bad cough. Absurd yet exciting, the story is mirrored in the frenetic pace with which viral images circulate through social media feeds and WhatsApp chats, where truth and fiction bleed into each other, and logic dissipates.
O Seeker (India/USA, 2024, dir Gavati Wad, 19 mins, Hindi with English subtitles)
Set as the world slowly heals from a pandemic, O Seeker considers the relationship among science, politics, spirituality, and superstition in India. Shot on 16mm, the film follows an unnamed searcher seeking answers to questions around life and death. Woven around several characters caught in surreal circumstances, the film mirrors the lapse of time and space that characterised people’s experience of the pandemic. Home, news media, the nation-state, and the cosmos all collapse into a single reverie.
~ of many movements and thresholds ~ (India, 2023, dir Nithin Shams, 19 mins, Hindi and English)
This sound piece captures the city of Delhi the way Nithin Shams remembers it from his time as a resident between 2016 and 2021. We hear earnest recitals, the azaan from local mosques, state tactics of distraction as well as rhetorics of azaadi (freedom). Documenting the motions of an old city with a field recorder, the work becomes its sonic trace.
This work was originally developed for the virtual exhibition Norient City Sounds: Delhi, curated and edited by Suvani Suri.
Trip (India, 1970, dir Pramod Pati, 4 mins, no spoken dialogue)
Made with funding from Films Division of India under its 'experimental' category, Trip is a distinct take on the city symphony genre. It is a composite of photographs that are sped up to portray time-lapse within a single frame, capturing movement in busy Bombay. The film runs across a gamut of public spaces in the city from dawn to dusk, the passage of time registered solely in the changing ratios of people to monuments.
Slow Shift (India/USA, 2023, dir Shambhavi Kaul, 9 mins, no spoken dialogue)
This short film is a reflection on the intersections between myth and reality, as the filmmaker trains her camera on Hampi – a UNESCO World Heritage Site in India marked by the sculpted ruins of the royal empire of Vijayanagara, imagined here as overrun by langurs. This speculative fiction hints at the seismic entanglements of past and present, and an unsettling assertion of life beyond the human.
Cinema 3
Location
Barbican Cinema 1 is located within the main Barbican building on Level -2. Head to Level G and walk towards the Lakeside Terrace where you’ll find stairs and lifts to take you down to the venue floor.
Address
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London
EC2Y 8DS
Public transport
The Barbican is widely accessible by bus, tube, train and by foot or bicycle. Plan your journey and find more route information in ‘Your Visit’ or book your car parking space in advance.
