May 10 2026 to May 10 2026 5 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Charles Correa became one of India’s greatest architects partly because of toy trains. He played with tinplate rails that could be pulled apart each evening and laid out again the next morning in an entirely new formation. The same handful of pieces, endlessly recombined. Films gave him a window into the complexities of urban life: the same street, seen from a new angle, meaning something different each time.

The Nagari Film Competition carries his curiosity forward. An initiative of the Charles Correa Foundation, Nagari is an annual short film competition developing 7-minute films about Indian cities. Spanning 24 cities, it has grown into a living archive of Indian urban life. 

When Indians talk about public space, we do not envision parks and plazas, but rather bustling street stalls and vendors parked under trees. The bus stations, the train terminal, the footpath. The public realm is a continuous negotiation between people and place, changing with the hours, adjusting to the seasons. Caste, class, and generations exist all at once. It is, as one urbanist put it, where a city is at its most democratic, honest, and energetic. 

The session opens with a talk by Vinay Sreenivasa on what happens when the city’s informal life loses its legal ground: the vendors, the commons, the pavement economies. Eleven films from the 2025 cohort of Nagari will be screened, with English subtitles. The session will then open to the audience for questions.

Film Schedule:

5:00pm – 5:25pm: Talk by Vinay Sreenivasa

5:25pm – 5:33pm: पकड़म पकड़ाई (Pakdam Pakdai)
In the bustling Sadar Market of Agra, a group of children who sell balloons in the market take us along as they navigate between work and play, hostility and joy, commerce and friendship in the urban space that is designed to exclude them. In this vehicle-choked public realm, we observe their routine of overcoming various barriers and intuitively carve spaces for themselves.

5:33pm – 5:41pm: Pascal Premier League
This film is about the transformation of a street with a deep history of violence, displacement, and change into a space of joy and community. Set on Shahid Road in Jogeshwari East, a neighbourhood once marked by the 1992–93 Bombay riots, the film observes how a group of young boys reclaim this narrow lane by turning it into a cricket league of their own. What was once a site of fear and memory now becomes a field of play and laughter.

5:41pm – 5:49pm: Mauj Ni Khoj (Seeking Fun)
In the small city of Bhuj, two young Muslim women navigate societal and familial restrictions carving out fleeting moments of joy in the city. The film follows their friendship revealing how the public realm is both constraining and resilient, where small defiant acts create space for mauj (fun).

5:49pm – 5:57pm: How Much Space Does a Firefly Take?
How much space does one take? is a question Kabir asks as he performs his solo play about his trans-ness and belonging in a city. Interwoven with phone calls from different trans people recounting their experiences of navigating urban public space, his play takes shape to become a testament of trans memories, struggle, and reclamation. The film questions how identity driving one’s experiences with public space. Who are the cities made for? Who are they accessible to? Why do queer people need to be invisible while traversing through the city?

5:57pm – 6:05pm: Deewar Nāma (Chronicles of the Walls)
A meditation on expression, erasure, and ownership, this film is a reflective documentary that journeys through Mumbai’s walls: from the bustling lanes of Charni Road to the fading murals of Bandra. Through encounters with muralists, commuters, and anonymous street artists, the film captures the fragile dance between creation and censorship, memory and experience.

6:05pm – 6:13pm: In Search of Humans
Set in a restless Kolkata, this film observes a city where digital and real worlds merge, dissolving the boundaries of public space and human emotion. Through fragments of protests, daily life, and screens projecting chaos, it reflects a time shaped by fear, surveillance, and disillusionment. Blending documentary, AI-generated imagery, Gaming graphics, and personal archives, the film reveals how people move within self-made boxes.

6:13pm – 6:21pm: Hissa
The story of two migrant barber brothers who have spent their lives cutting hair on the streets of Mumbai’s Dhobi Talao. Their small setup survives on the edge of legality as their chairs and mirrors spill onto the road. Though they come from the same family of barbers, their dreams divide them. The younger wants to return home once his son begins earning, while the elder believes the city has become his home. This film is a reflection on what it means to belong, to survive, and to choose one’s place in a restless city.

6:21pm – 6:29pm: Manaveeyam
Street cultures across the world can shape socially conscious societies. This documentary asks whether public space development is merely an infrastructure upgrade or a catalyst for cultural evolution. Manaveeyam Veedhi, once informally reclaimed by street collectives, was renovated in 2023 as a cultural corridor under Kerala’s Smart City Project, ensuring 24/7 public access. The film explores its spirit through stories of inclusion and accessibility, following a young man who worked as a juice maker at Manaveeyam to later became a singer through music collectives, and a non-binary lesbian who shares their story of how the space gave them the confidence to acknowledge their identity.

6:29pm – 6:37pm: ফুল গাড়ি (Scent of Nocturnal Flowers)
Explore a small patch of land beside Barasat station that transforms each night from a bustling auto stand into a flower market. As the last autos leave, flower vendors arrive, setting up makeshift shelters, dozing under the open sky, and waiting for the first Bongaon Local, the train they call Phool Gari to begin their trade. As metro construction slowly encroaches, swallowing the space they call their own, the film observes their quiet rhythms, the precarious balance between labour and survival, and the fleeting moments of community that emerge in the margins.

6:37pm – 6:45pm: महाद्वार (Mahadwar – The Great Corridor)
A journey through the fading rhythms of Mahadwar Road — a historic street in Kolhapur that once pulsed with trade, devotion, and daily life. As large-scale redevelopment plans surround the Mahalaxmi Temple, the film reflects on what is lost when progress erases memory. Through nostalgic visuals, intimate sounds, and a deeply personal voiceover, the director revisits the street of her childhood to understand its transformation.

6:45pm – 6:53pm: Through The Dappled Light
Through the play of dappled light, the film reflects on the lives of Chandigarh’s informal workers: visible yet overlooked, ever-present yet structurally invisible. Occupying the shade without tenancy or title, they operate under intermittent licenses issues post the 2014 Street Vendor Survey. Through the stories of a barber, a chaiwala, a kelewala and labourers, the film explores how their presence, among the trees of Chandigarh, offer affordable services and help generate a social public realm for the lower-income classes.

6:53pm – 7:00pm: Audience Q&A with Vinay Sreenivasa

In collaboration with:

Speaker

Vinay Sreenivasa
Advocate & Member, Alternative Law Forum
Vinay K. Sreenivasa is a Bengaluru-based advocate. He is a founder member of the Bengaluru Bus Prayanikara Vedike, a bus commuters’ forum, and a member of the Karnataka Pragathipara Beedhi Vyaparigala Sangha, a street vendors’ union. For the past fourteen years, he has been advocating for the democratisation of streets as vital urban commons.