Article
Revolution in India´s minds
Let us have a revolution in the mind. Shaina Anand is struggling for developing alternative voices, pictures and media in India. She shoots and edits her own video films, believes in copyleft and free media.
Shaina Anand has created an alternative media project, called ´Tellavision Project´ and the allied Chitrakarkhana.net web site. This project aims to document social and political processes in Bombay, post September 11.
She tries to create a language of image-making and viewing that ties into everyday concerns of young people in a way that reflects their lives and conditions, rather than reproduce a "political" rhetoric that might serve also to alienate and distance large numbers of people, while speaking only to the converted.
She is engaged in setting up a network of new media networks in Asia. The network is planning e.g. to develop a free software desktop in the Urdu language as a concrete instance of collaboration between people at Sarai and the LinuxIran group.
Her film ´Infinite injustice/Ensuring freedom´ is a video documentation and Public intervention Project on the
changing landscapes of Mumbai between September 11th and the Gujarat
violence.
Soon after the US government announced its formation of a coalition against terror, protests and public actions condemning unilateralist US policy started taking place all over the world. While protests from Islamic countries made it to homes via mainstream media, the elusive but bright glimpses of public action in India and elsewhere in the world were sidelined. In Calcutta, a huge protest of over 60000 people went largely unnoticed.
Workers and young student activists organised one of the first protest marches in Bombay City. Women´s empowerment groups came together to distribute pamphlets in trains. In the weeks that followed, the city saw a couple of more public actions, but more and more, public meetings and talks were taking place inside enclosures. This is the city whose recent active political history as port and industrial capital of the fifties saw people claiming the streets, changing government policy, standing up for justice and equality. The 1990s saw the city burn for weeks as communal riots, loot and violence were initiated and planned by the machinery of the State.
In today´s post-industrial cityscape, public protests of most forms are banned. They are considered a public inconvenience. They may disturb the peace.
Regardless, despite efforts to rent the fabric and spirit of the city, the city moves on. But there is never a sense of the histories that pass, as it is a city that remains grossly undocumented. We systematically followed the anti-war movements. Our journey took us through the labyrinth of the inner city, almost never before filmed. And here were so many voices of sanity. Fiery oratory. Community leaders who have dedicated their lives to civil liberties, secularism, defending human rights and democracy. Writers who run alternative publications. Women´s organisations. Trade Union Solidarity groups. Concerned citizens. Lawyers, students, journalists. Fearless. Passionate. Urgently expressing a need to take this campaign for humanity onto a wider more visible public platform.
Emerging from this documentation are myriad voices denouncing the violent oppression of the last half-century and seeking to reaffirm and ensure fundamental understandings of freedom, pluralism and democracy. In these local agreements, there lie critical elements of an alternative politics that is waiting to be consolidated.
She tries to create a language of image-making and viewing that ties into everyday concerns of young people in a way that reflects their lives and conditions, rather than reproduce a "political" rhetoric that might serve also to alienate and distance large numbers of people, while speaking only to the converted.
She is engaged in setting up a network of new media networks in Asia. The network is planning e.g. to develop a free software desktop in the Urdu language as a concrete instance of collaboration between people at Sarai and the LinuxIran group.
Her film ´Infinite injustice/Ensuring freedom´ is a video documentation and Public intervention Project on the
changing landscapes of Mumbai between September 11th and the Gujarat
violence.
Soon after the US government announced its formation of a coalition against terror, protests and public actions condemning unilateralist US policy started taking place all over the world. While protests from Islamic countries made it to homes via mainstream media, the elusive but bright glimpses of public action in India and elsewhere in the world were sidelined. In Calcutta, a huge protest of over 60000 people went largely unnoticed.
Workers and young student activists organised one of the first protest marches in Bombay City. Women´s empowerment groups came together to distribute pamphlets in trains. In the weeks that followed, the city saw a couple of more public actions, but more and more, public meetings and talks were taking place inside enclosures. This is the city whose recent active political history as port and industrial capital of the fifties saw people claiming the streets, changing government policy, standing up for justice and equality. The 1990s saw the city burn for weeks as communal riots, loot and violence were initiated and planned by the machinery of the State.
In today´s post-industrial cityscape, public protests of most forms are banned. They are considered a public inconvenience. They may disturb the peace.
Regardless, despite efforts to rent the fabric and spirit of the city, the city moves on. But there is never a sense of the histories that pass, as it is a city that remains grossly undocumented. We systematically followed the anti-war movements. Our journey took us through the labyrinth of the inner city, almost never before filmed. And here were so many voices of sanity. Fiery oratory. Community leaders who have dedicated their lives to civil liberties, secularism, defending human rights and democracy. Writers who run alternative publications. Women´s organisations. Trade Union Solidarity groups. Concerned citizens. Lawyers, students, journalists. Fearless. Passionate. Urgently expressing a need to take this campaign for humanity onto a wider more visible public platform.
Emerging from this documentation are myriad voices denouncing the violent oppression of the last half-century and seeking to reaffirm and ensure fundamental understandings of freedom, pluralism and democracy. In these local agreements, there lie critical elements of an alternative politics that is waiting to be consolidated.
Author: Karin Bergquist
Bio
After completing a video and film production course, while still in college, Shaina Anand worked with film director Saeed Mirza on screenplays, and was first assistant director of a docu-series, that involved a 5 month travel across India.
She has been writing on her travels and the issue of media ethics and representing reality.
She organized an anti-nuclear campaign in city colleges by screening films, coordinating talks and forming networks of students that lead to a 12-hour Concert for Peace.
In 1999 she went to Temple University, USA to pursue her MFA in Film and Media Arts on the Inlaks scolarship, but returned home a year later, as the streets of Bombay beckoned.
She has been writing on her travels and the issue of media ethics and representing reality.
She organized an anti-nuclear campaign in city colleges by screening films, coordinating talks and forming networks of students that lead to a 12-hour Concert for Peace.
In 1999 she went to Temple University, USA to pursue her MFA in Film and Media Arts on the Inlaks scolarship, but returned home a year later, as the streets of Bombay beckoned.
Works
´Infinite injustice/Ensuring freedom
Film / TV,
2002
A video documentation and Public intervention Project on the
changing landscapes of Mumbai between September 11th and the Gujarat
violence.
Projects
This artist took part in the following project(s) organized/funded by the culturebase.net partner institutions.
Images of Asia
(08 August 03 - 26 September 03)
Www
Website for Tellavision Project
Shaina Anand has created an alternative media project, called ´Tellavision Project´ and the allied Chitrakarkhana.net website. This project aims to document social and political processes in Bombay, post September 11.
