REFRAMING REPRESENTATION

11:30am
-12:45pm

Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh are Academy Award nominated independent documentary filmmakers whose decade long work has focussed on developing a new visual and narrative language for telling stories of under-represented voices in India – ranging from farming communities and journalists working to create transformative change for their communities, to refugees and LGBTQ artists finding ways of platforming critical issues around citizenship. Their work focusses on movements in the margins that re-center the narrative. 

Reframing traditional arcs of storytelling and representation, Thomas and Ghosh’s films have been celebrated for creating significant impact for participants they’ve worked with, and their films continue to be used as advocacy tools, included in university curriculums and exhibited globally – becoming catalysts for new conversations.

In this session, Thomas and Ghosh will talk about how they maintain the delicate balance between filmmaker – participant relationships and the stakes and challenges of storytelling in a dynamically evolving and complex democracy. Revisiting their body of work, including their acclaimed debut feature documentary Writing With Fire, which played at over 150 festivals and became the first Indian documentary to be nominated for an Academy Award, they will explore complexities around authorship, representation and maintaining authenticity while coming from outside of the class, caste, gender, location and identity of the people whose stories they tell. 

Reflecting on their 13-year journey, Thomas and Ghosh will talk about the relationships they curate with participants, managing shifting dynamics both during and after production, and especially as these films make their way into the world. What happens when the political environment in which the story is framed changes dramatically, increasing stakes for both filmmakers and participants? And how does one navigate the role of friend, filmmaker and citizen – all of which come with their unique responsibilities, sometimes at odds with each other. With Patricia Aufderheide, media scholar and a member of the Documentary Accountability Working Group, they will look at the internal process of working with subjects, and the external pressures that swirl around films that challenge power in an increasingly polarized and dangerous world. 

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