ONE WAY OR ANOTHER Curated by Erika Balsom and Shai Heredia One Way or Another brings together works of feminist nonfiction from diverse contexts that experiment with form to articulate aesthetic and political commitments. The programme takes its name from the English-language title of Sara Gómez’s docufiction De cierta maniera (1977), in homage to the Afro-Cuban filmmaker who passed away in 1974 at the age of only 31, leaving her first and only feature-length film to be posthumously released. At the same time, the phrase “one way or another” – with its invocation of perseverance and its embrace of plurality – provides a way of describing the attitude of the filmmakers included in the programme and the eclectic character of their work. These are films that were made against the odds, in contestation of dominant norms, and which conform to no single aesthetic style or political position. What unites them is the desire to use the moving image, one way or another, to articulate dissent and produce alternative representations of oneself and one’s world.
INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM Selection Committee Priya Sen, Savyasachi Anju Prabir, Shai Heredia The International Program features films by filmmakers from Asia and South East Asia and its diaspora. The films in this program bear witness to the socio-political shifts in their own contexts. They capture moments of cultural reckoning, environmental upheaval, and social resilience across the region and challenge conventional modes of cinema through spirited explorations with sound and image.
EXPERIMENTA FORUM Moderated by Kalpana Subramanian The Experimenta Forum invites audiences to consider the profound influence of film as a space for both personal expression and social commentary, exploring how experimental nonfiction continues to redefine boundaries and amplify diverse voices across the Global South. Through conversations around nonfiction cinema with scholar and writer Erika Balsom and filmmakers Priya Sen and Deepa Dhanraj, this forum examines the personal and political dimensions of curatorial practice and filmmaking. Together, these dialogues offer a unique context for critical reflection and exchange, celebrating bold cinematic traditions that have inspired and shaped contemporary discourse.
EXPERIMENTA 2024 SCHEDULE
DAY 1 | DECEMBER 4 | WEDNESDAY
6:00 PM | ONE WAY OR ANOTHER: IMAGEMAKING Curated by Erika Balsom and Shai Heredia The act of representing oneself and one’s world is a matter of politics and pleasure. These four very different films address the implications of this gesture, experimenting with filmic language in ways that reflect on what it means to make an image.
Untitled 77 Han Ok-hee, 1977, South Korea, 16mm (Digital Transfer), Colour, Sound, 7’ Han Ok-hee was a founding member of the Kaidu Club, an experimental filmmaking group initiated in 1974 in Seoul. The group positioned themselves in distinct opposition to the commercialism and patriarchal thrust of mainstream cinema. Untitled 77-A is exemplary of this stance.
Onanism Nalini Malani, 1969, India, 16mm (Digital Transfer), BW, Sound, 4’ A woman lies alone on a divan, clutching a piece of white fabric between her legs, writhing in what could be ecstasy or pain. This is Malani’s second film produced at the Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), an interdisciplinary art space in Mumbai founded by Akbar Padamsee between 1969-1972.
Susana Susana Blaustein Muñoz, 1980, Argentina/USA, 16mm (Digital Transfer), BW, Sound, 25’ In this reflexive work of autobiography, Susana Blaustein Muñoz asks friends and family members to speak about her and weaves their testimonies together with her own responses and an array of filmic and photographic materials.
Mi aporte (My contribution) Sara Gómez, 1972, Cuba, 35mm (Digital Transfer), BW, Sound, 33’ Begun in 1969, Mi aporte was commissioned by the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas, the organization responsible for advancing the rights of women after the revolution, yet the film was censored upon completion. With keen attention to the experiences of Afro-Cuban women, Gómez parses how gender, race, and class together shape post-revolutionary society.
DAY 2 | DECEMBER 5 | THURSDAY
10AM – 1PM | EXPERIMENTA FORUM Reflections on an Exhibition : The Many Worlds of ‘No Master Territories’ with scholar and critic Erika Balsom
2:30 PM| INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM 1 Films by Robin Riad, Praagya Arya, Dimple Mishra, Mahdi Awada, Chantal Partamian, JT Trinidad, Elysa Wendi, LEE Wai Shing.
Abgad Hawaz Robin Riad, 2024, Canada, Digital, Colour, Sound, 1.30’ Learn the Arabic alphabet in 28 easy steps!
Home and Hatred Praagya Arya, Dimple Mishra, 2024, India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 5.10’ Home and Hatred is a juxtaposition of field recordings and documented moving images that attempt to unveil the socio-economic reality of the fringes of our semi-urban hometown.
Notes on Sanity Mahdi Awada, 2022, Lebanon, Digital, Colour, Sound, 6.31‘ By combining moving images, photography, and voice narration, this film delves into the layered history of Lebanon’s first mental asylum established in 1898 by a Swiss Quaker missionary.
Traces آثار Chantal Partamian, 2023, Lebanon/Canada, Digital, Colour, Sound, 8.45’ Beirut 1980s. Amid the rubble of a torn building, a reel of film. An unlikely unraveling of queer bodies taking shape and form, while the war-torn city around and its spectacle of toxic masculinity glitches and disintegrates.
the river that never ends JT Trinidad, 2022, Philippines, Digital, Colour & BW, Sound, 19’ Along the Pasig River that faces major changes as an expressway is constructed, Baby, a middle-aged transwoman, shuttles between her job as a companion-for-hire for strangers and her duty to her father.
Room 404 Elysa Wendi & LEE Wai Shing, 2023, Hong Kong/Poland, Digital, Colour, Sound, 29’ A never-ending typhoon outside of room 525 in Hong Kong has transposed an artist duo into an unsettling situation of digital error of 404 in the present time. Inspired by the concept of Room 666 by Wim Wenders, Elysa Wendi and Wai Shing Lee invited various artists to the hotel room 525 during an art residency in 2019.
4:30 PM | ONE WAY OR ANOTHER: POSSESSION Curated by Erika Balsom and Shai Heredia
In what has been hailed as a path-breaking cinema vérité exploration, this film offers the viewer a deep understanding of the many exploitations surrounding the lives of women and the subversive ways through which they navigate their worlds.
Eyes of Stone Nilita Vachani, 1990, India, 16mm (Digital Transfer), Colour, Sound, 94’ Eyes of Stone is a film about spirit possession and healing, shot in the desert interiors of Bhilwara district, Rajasthan, India. The film explores the rituals of faith, healing, possession and rebellion that thrive within the confines of a stringent patriarchal order.
6:30 PM | INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM 2 Films by Mehdi Jahan, Hansa Thapliyal, Laisul Hoque, Niki Kohandel, Pobwarat Maprasob: Dome
What would have been there had there been nothing? Mehdi Jahan, 2023, India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 7’ “My mother, who survived a couple of strokes, has a fear of developing amnesia and forgetting her loved ones. She is haunted by a recurrent nightmare in which as a young girl she’s chased by a mob. This film is an attempt to reflect on the relationship between my mother’s fear of her amnesia and the collective amnesia of a nation.” MJ
Kyaa hai Yeh Samjhauta? (Coming to terms or, Making your terms?) Hansa Thapliyal, 2023, India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 9’ 12 case workers who have been working on domestic violence cases across remote corners of Bundelkhand, create a lexicon of words often used by women on the field. This film, commissioned by Nirantar, Delhi, looks at the word, Samjhauta: Do you make your terms? Do you come to terms?
The Purpose was to Document the Other Side Laisul Hoque, 2023, Bangladesh/UK, Digital, Colour, Sound, 14’ Exploring intergenerational trauma, emotional distance, and healing within a South Asian family, this film follows the artist’s mother’s journey to London, recorded on the same camera his father used in 2004 to document his own travels through Europe, when he couldn’t bring his family along.
The Sparrow is Free Niki Kohandel, 2021, UK/France/Iran, Digital, Colour, Sound, 14’ In an empty house, a young woman hears a voice. The tales it evokes lead her to recreate scenes from her grandmother’s past life. Through a window into the life of the filmmaker’s grandmother, Kohandel’s short interview-film explores gender roles in early 20th-century Iran.
Did you see the hole that mom dig? Pobwarat Maprasob: Dome, 2022, Thailand, Digital, Colour, Sound, 26.37’ During Songkran, a holiday in Thailand, the filmmaker visits his grandmother’s house. The house is filled with laughter and home-cooked meals, but there’s also a melancholic air as they remember their recently deceased grandfather. As night falls and everyone drifts into sleep, a subtle, unexplainable presence seems to awaken in the shadows.
DAY 3 | DECEMBER 6 | FRIDAY
10AM – 1PM | EXPERIMENTA FORUM ‘Being in the world with Cinema’ with filmmaker Priya Sen
2:30 PM|INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM 3 Films by Malik Irtiza, Tenzin Phuntsog, Babu Eshwar Prasad, Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko
Thokei Malik Irtiza, 2024, Kashmir, Digital, Colour, Sound, 4.52’ “Thokei” (Kashmiri for spits) follows Shokapaseen, a non being from void(s). The news of Shokpaseen entrusting sound capsules to fish in the Sindh valley is revealed, as the fish do a sporadic broadcast of this encounter and location of the capsules for dreamers.
Pure Land Tenzin Phuntsog, 2023, USA/Tibet, Digital, Colour, Sound, 16’ A son traverses remote and dramatic natural landscapes in the United States in an effort to capture images resembling his mother’s native Tibet.
Dear Chalam Babu Eshwar Prasad, 2024, India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 15.25’ Dear Chalam can be read as a eulogy for a dear friend, a journey through the landscape of cinema, and of making and sharing films. A poetic assemblage, the film dips into Chalam Bennurkar’s powerful documentary practice, his involvement with the Odessa Collective and commitment to cinema as a people’s movement.
Lovers’ Wind Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko, 2024, Iran/Tunisia/Canada, Digital, Colour, Sound, 37’ In 1970, French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse was killed when the helicopter he was filming from crashed into the Karaj Dam near Tehran. Nearly 40 years later, Lovers’ Wind returns to the dam, rewinding Lamorrise’s final images to evoke a fractured, disrupted, and dislocated new voice for the fabled easterly breeze.
4:30 PM | ONE WAY OR ANOTHER: BATTLEGROUND Curated by Erika Balsom and Shai Heredia The world of images is a battleground. This program features fierce contestations of the ways in which women are typically pictured and raises the question of how patriarchal power intersects with state violence and colonial dispossession.
Popsicles Gloria Camiruaga, 1982-84, Chile, Digital, Colour, Sound, 5’ Gloria Camiruaga calls Popsicles a “rosary of alarm, eternal and circular; the alarm of a woman who desires life, light, truth, and solidarity, but who instead sees and receives death and fear.” Made in response to Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship, Popsicles is a potent visual metaphor in which innocence and pleasure mingle with omnipresent violence.
We Aim to Please Robin Laurie, Margot Nash, 1976, Australia, 16mm (Digital Transfer), Colour, Sound, 13’ With anarchic irreverence, Robin Laurie and Margot Nash assail the conventions that govern the representation of women’s bodies and propose a radical alternative.
Miss Universo en el Perú (Miss Universe in Peru) Grupo Chaski, 1982, Peru, 16mm (Digital Transfer), BW, Sound, 39’ The backbone of Miss Universo en el Perú is found in a juxtaposition of two events that took place simultaneously in Lima in July 1982: the Miss Universe beauty pageant and the sixth national congress of the Peruvian Peasant Confederation.
6:30 PM | INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM 4 Films by Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige, Zhou Tao
Sarcophagus of Drunken Loves Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige, 2024, Lebanon/France, Digital, Colour, Sound, 8’ Today, in Lebanon, power cuts are not an event, they are a new state. Even the museum is often deprived of electricity. But visitors want to see, despite everything.
The Periphery of the Base Zhou Tao, 2024, China, Digital, Colour, Sound, 53′ In the scorching heat of the desert, where the ground is blistering and the air thick with pervasive sand, an ‘infrastructure’ project unfolds in this unforgiving environment. The scale of this endeavour is so immense that the individuals navigating through it appear minuscule in comparison.
DAY 4 | DECEMBER 7 | SATURDAY
10AM – 1PM | EXPERIMENTA FORUM Feminist filmmaking as ‘bearing witness’ with filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj
2:30 PM | INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM 5 Films by Mark Chua, Lam Li Shuen, Shambhavi Kaul, Gavati Wad, Bo Wang
The Inescapable Desire of Roots 根欲 Mark Chua, Lam Li Shuen, 2024, Singapore, Digital, Colour, Sound, 6’ A man with hair growing wildly over his body is taken by a mania of ecstasy and anguish. He struggles with the hair becoming a means of discipline and punishment against himself, while being overwhelmed by the explosive jubilance of its sprouting.
Slow Shift Shambhavi Kaul, 2023, USA/India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 9’ Langurs contemplate their world as it changes around them. In Slow Shift, humans, animals, music, and rock are entangled. The film playfully interrogates various intersections: real and mythic, lived and preserved, human and animal, and ancient and geological timescales.
O Seeker Gavati Wad, 2024, India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 19’ While she waits to fall asleep every night, a young girl confronts her fears and anxieties about human existence, the news media and the cosmos. O Seeker considers the relationship between science, politics, spirituality and superstition in India, as it weaves a puzzle of unresolved questions through conversations about grief, loss and absurd events, real and imagined.
An Asian Ghost Story Bo Wang, 2023, Hong Kong/Netherlands, Digital, Colour, Sound, 37’ Wigs were vital for the rise of the Asian economy in the post-war era. Between Mao’s China – the largest source of hair supplies – and the insatiable Western market, Hong Kong functioned as the gateway. In 1965, the U.S. imposed an embargo on “Asiatic hair”, cutting off foreign currency to Communist China. This film examines the role of Hong Kong as a transient space that mediates and sanitizes the connection between different worlds.
4:30 PM | ONE WAY OR ANOTHER: FRAGMENTS Curated by Erika Balsom and Shai Heredia Sometimes, the world gets in the way of finishing a film. This double bill of films made by close collaborators of the Lebanese poet Etel Adnan comprises a fragment of a film never completed and a film completed forty years after it was begun.
Les Femmes Palestiniennes Jocelyne Saab, 1974, Lebanon, 16mm (Digital Transfer), Colour, Sound, 11’ Les Femmes palestiniennes was commissioned by the French television station Antenne 2 but never broadcast. Although it is extant only in a fragmentary state, it remains a powerful document of commitment and struggle.
Autoportrait Simone Fattal, 1972/2012, Lebanon/France, Digital, BW, Sound, 46’ Interested in the durational and relational possibilities of the moving image, Fattal recorded some seven hours of herself speaking to the camera and with friends, but put the footage aside for some forty years, returning to it only in 2012.
6:30 PM | INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM 6 Films by Mahmoud Ibrahim, Omar Mismar
The Last Day Mahmoud Ibrahim, 2024, Egypt, Digital, Colour, Sound, 5’ Brothers Ziad and Moody spend their last moments in the family home they’re forced to leave due to a scheduled demolition as part of the city’s development plans. To pass the time while they move the furniture outside, Moody turns on the TV.
A Frown Gone Mad Omar Mismar, 2024, Lebanon, Digital, Colour, Sound, 71.12’ In a Lebanese beauty salon, Bouba works on her clients with Botox and fillers. Together, they fearfully ruminate about the possibility of a war. They vent their worries as they paralyze their expressions. The rampant culture of Botox and filler is reframed here as an extension of war and perpetual bouts of violence witnessed today.
DAY 5 | DECEMBER 8 | SUNDAY
4:00 PM | INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM 7 Films by Mahishaa, Utsa Hazarika, Ayon Pratim Saikia, Paribartana Mohanty, Naghmeh Abbasi
Babasaheb in Bengaluru Mahishaa, 2024, India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 4.41’ Across the metropolitan city of Bengaluru you cannot escape the imagery of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in multiple forms, as a sign of assertion from India’s subaltern marginalized castes. This film is a dedication to those who have kept Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s philosophy alive.
Round Two Utsa Hazarika, 2022, USA/India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 7.22’ Using archival footage, contemporary reporting, excerpts from music videos and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, this film focuses on postcolonial immigrant narratives. Lullaby of Waves সোঁতৰ নিচুকনি Ayon Pratim Saikia, 2023, India, Digital, BW, Sound, 16’ A poignant exploration of the filmmakers’ journey toward understanding and accepting the profound sense of belonging tied to space and time. Rice Hunger Sorrow ଭାତ ଦୁଃଖ ଦୁଃଖ Paribartana Mohanty, 2021, India, Digital, Colour, Sound, 20’ Since the ‘1999 Super Cyclone’, the state of Odisha has faced a surge of recurring cyclones, tsunamis, rising ocean levels and land erosion, rapidly changing its geopolitics, demographics, and culture. This is a brief account of the filmmaker’s encounters and interventions into specific disaster affected areas near the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Odisha. Landscape Suspended Naghmeh Abbasi, 2022, Iran, Digital, Colour, Sound, 27’ Under the pretext of a police interrogation, this film shows the politically charged history of Shaho mountain of the Zagros Mountains range in Iran. This visual interrogation triggers many questions and explanations about its meaning.
6:00 PM | ADOLFAS MEKAS AWARD
The Adolfas Mekas Award for cinematic madness, risk taking and the making of spirited mistakes will be presented to a filmmaker from the International Program as a special recognition.
International Program Jury : Anuja Ghosalkar, Sohrab Hura, Yashaswini Raghunandan
Badnam Basti Prem Kapoor, 1971, India, 35mm (Digital Restoration), BW, 100’ India Premiere of digital restoration by Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art, National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) and Film Heritage Foundation
Badnam Basti is the debut film of Prem Kapoor, considered one of the filmmakers from the Indian New Wave. This artfully shaped musical melodrama is an adaptation of Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena’s eponymous story from 1957 (published in English as A Street With 57 Lanes) about a ménage-a-trois relationship. The film is considered India’s first queer film. It briefly appeared in public in 1971, only to disappear immediately thereafter until it was rediscovered in the archive of the Arsenal Institute of Film and Video Art.
FESTIVAL TEAM
Festival Director: Shai Heredia
Artistic Director: Gavati Wad
Selection Committee: Priya Sen, Savyasachi Anju Prabir, Shai Heredia
Art: Chitra Ganesh
Experimenta Forum Moderator: Kalpana Subramanian
Festival Assistant: Sukriti Chordiya
Brochure Design: Nidhi Nair
Production Assistant: Janhavi Patankar Nikam, Athiq Samith
