Persistence Resistance 2008 in London

A festival of contemporary political films

London Edition

Organised by Magic Lantern Foundation in collaboration with The Flea Pit

July 22 & 23, 2008

Venue: The Flea Pit, 49 Columbia Road, London E2 7RG

Held in New Delhi, India on the 28, 29 and 30 April 2008, Persistence Resistance aimed to create a cinema space to celebrate the diverse nature of films in India and to some extent, the world. The idea was to showcase the range of subjects and forms the films work with, and to interrogate the emerging aesthetics of political filmmaking. It is apparent that in the last decade or so Indian image-makers have crossed new boundaries, carried out different formal experiments and also recast the notion of political filmmaking. Women have played a significant role in this and have given a new formal twist to political documentaries that explore and engage with form and the political terrain in a nuanced manner with spaces for ambiguities and multiple readings. It seems that political films are no longer bound by the binaries of the past, perhaps developed during war filmmaking, and yet there is no one picture emerging, for the formal explorations are as vast as the diverse subjects.

Persistence Resistance screened nearly 100 films over three days in a multitude of spaces and manners.

The Flea Pit presents a mini version of Persistence Resistance for the documentary lovers and watchers in London. We are attempting to showcase works by some of the pioneering filmmakers of India, many of who are women, as well as locate some of key challenges and issues facing the nation.

22 JULY 2008

On this day we explore the concept of the nation-state and locate fractures & margins; spaces & possibilities. In Fractured Nation we present three films from two border-states of India: Manipur and Kashmir, that are caught between insurgents and the Indian army. Using remarkably distinct narrative styles and story-telling methods all the three films explore the situation of women in such circumstances. In Metro-Nation we engage with the metropolis. Both the films in this section are by women directors and are filmed on Bombay. One locates gender and access to toilets in a city while the other looks at the conceptual construct of the metropolis itself: what makes it, who people it and how do issues of migration, moving people, diaspora, labour and identity play out in the same space.

23 JULY 2008

On this day we see the counter part of the nation: the citizen and confront a series of situations that face citizens. In Access Denied we screen two films that represent movements by ordinary people to claim their entitlements on natural resources. In Invisible Citizens three films present diverse forms of exclusion using different styles, and Neo-global Citizens is an ethnographic journey into the dislocated land-space of software companies.

Screening Schedule