Kol director joins US film, cultural exchange event

Kolkata: City-based film-maker Sourav Sarangi has been nominated for a cultural exchange programme, designed to foster relationships with American and international film professionals. Sarangi’s project, ‘Fair-Home Fairy-Tales’, is a documentary feature on an ageing Kolkata-based puppeteer who retells her family’s war-torn history in Myanmar and India through her handmade puppets.
The 2023 Global Media Makers LA Residency, presented by Film Independent and the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, provides access to master classes, industry sessions and field trips as well as cultural engagement and networking opportunities. Sarangi has been nominated along with 25 other film-makers from 15 nations, including Yemen, UAE, Turkey, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nepal, Namibia, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Bangladesh and Angola. From India, three have been nominated. Sarangi will use memory to traverse from the past to the present and touch upon issues, like war, migration and the essence of finding identity in a new country through puppetry.
“I heard these stories of migration from a puppet artist in Kolkata. The stories, which had got lost, needed to be retold in today’s context, when migration and war have turned commonplace. Some 30 million died in Asia Pacific during and after World War II. That is almost double the number who died in Europe then. Yet, nobody talks about what happened in the east. My documentary is a visual testimony through memory. By narrating this story of a family, I want to connect viewers with stories of millions who lost and found homes through migration.”
The programme is divided into four segments—documentary, direction, script writing and creative development. About his experience at the residency, Sarangi said, “It began on May 27 and will end on July 2. This is helping us expand horizons. During the programme, we realize there are spaces where film-makers of different cultures, values and creative forms can come together, interact and find ways to make their films.”
Two other directors from India have been nominated from India. Writer/director Nishant Roy Bombarde’s ‘Zero Mile’ is a narrative fiction. This project follows an upper-caste Indian woman, imprisoned for a hate-crime during the sectarian dispute of the nineties, when she confronts her prejudices after falling in love with a lower-caste girl. Writer/director/producer Pankaj Johar’s documentary feature titled ‘Catching Them Young’ zooms in on a school for ancient Indian spirituality and philosophy where the new batch of students is forced to choose between a liberal or radical religious practice.
Two directors from Bangladesh too are participating. Writer-director Mahde Hasan’s ‘Sand City’ is a narrative fiction where in a web of fantasy, ritual, and repressed sexuality, a young man and woman from Dhaka intersect through the unstable element of sand. Writer-director-producer Maksudul Hossain’s ‘Safa’ too is a narrative fiction. It explores the struggles of young and impulsive Safa to keep her paraplegic mother alive in the backdrop of a lower middle class setting in Dhaka.