Dec 22 2023 to Dec 22 2023 6 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

111 Minutes | English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati with English Subtitles

Dr. B. R Ambedkar: Now & Then is a feature-length documentary film that explores deep questions of the human condition. Questions of liberty, equality, fraternity, social justice, exclusion and marginalized representation through, Jyoti Nisha, a Bahujan feminist filmmaker’s gaze in an upper-caste Indian film industry. The film aspires to translate the praxis of Ambedkarite politics to image-making and representation of marginalized subjects’ culture, history, and politics in popular cinema and media.

Driven by Dr. Ambedkar’s philosophy epistemologically, the film symbolically and politically documents the representation and assertion of Bahujan people in the contemporary era. Questioning the institution of caste in India, this film is a commentary on religion, revolution, politics, and the freedom of speech.

Director’s Statement:

“Indians today are governed by two different ideologies. Their political ideal set in the preamble of the Constitution affirms a life of liberty, equality and fraternity. Their social ideal embodied in their religion denies them.”
~Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (Indian jurist, economist, political leader and social reformer)

This dual imagination of the Indian nation, as Dr. Ambedkar forewarned, finds its manifestation even on the silver screen. India’s popular imagination of its colonial past has been that of a “haloed” history of Indian nationalism. Ambedkar has not been part of this popular imagination, and neither do the politics, history, and social movements of the marginalized. The assertion of the marginalized has hardly made it to the pre-and post-independence Indian cinema. Largely, the image of Indian nationalism in the popular imagination has been that of M. K. Gandhi. Ambedkar and his social justice movements against Brahmanism have been absent from the public conscience.

This gaze of “othering,” silencing, and appropriating the existence of history, knowledge, and symbols of the marginalized communities have been tools employed by the upper-caste filmmakers deliberately. Evidently in that process, they have not only capitalized on such discourses but have also stripped the marginalized characters of their dignity and agency replicating the same hierarchical structures of caste on screen.

Stories of marginalized Bahujans (the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Class and converted minorities) who form 85% of the Indian population have not been told from the perspective of a hero. This is where ‘Dr. BR Ambedkar: Now & Then’ stands different because it documents the lived experiences of Bahujan communities in India and tells their story from an oppositional Bahujan feminist gaze resisting the type-casting and branding of popular culture’s imagination of marginalized narratives.

Crew

Crowdfunded by Wishberry

Editing: Supervising editor- Sahil Gada
Editors- Himanshu Chutiya Saikia & Uttkarsh Parmar

Background score: Rakshit Malhotra, Abhishek Bonthu & Hopun Saikia

Sound Design: Mohit Rana

Directors of Photography: Pooja Jain, Jyoti Nisha, Lakshya Bhutani, Vimal Mylon
Himanshu Chutiya Saikia, Sumantha Sharma & Sandesh

Original Songs: Jai Bhim (Shankuraj Konwar)
Ambala Pombala (Arivu feat Chinmayi Sripada)

Lyrics (Ambala Pombala): Uma Devi & Arivu

Location Sound: Anuroop Kukreja, Priyankar Basu, Kapil Dev Singh, Moinak Basu
Parvez Sheikh, Sanku & Partha

Graphics & Visual Effects: Harikrishnan Sasindran & Mriganka Bora

Animation: Harikrishnan Sasindran

Illustration: Sunil Abhiman Awachar