Reena Mohan

Being alone in the world and a search for what it means to be a good human being, in the meandering flow of life in its ordinary everydayness. This is the story of Om, a filmmaker who strives to bridge the gulf between his art and life by finding a common basis for both in responsibility and concern for the other. In the process he must confront his own inner exile and contradictions, memory and longing, and the nature of human relationships,. Like the waves of the sea, the ebb and flow of life continues and through it the film essays a journey and a quest.

Story of the filmmaker's journey with Uma, a certified scuba diver, exploring the underwater world and the threat to coral reefs of Gulf of Mannar, India. Born in a traditional family in Tamil Nadu, 53 year old Uma, a homemaker, has been trying to bring attention to this alarming environmental issue through her paintings. It is, in fact, these corals that inspired Uma to learn how to swim, dive and paint in her 50s.

Dipak and Saraswati live a simple life in Kathmandu. A devoted father and an adoring husband, Dipak works as a security guard, while Saraswati happily tends to traditional housework. Their home is modest, and their two girls are happy. Life would be perfect for the pregnant mother if only she could give her husband a son. Desperate in her desire, on the advice of a stranger, Saraswati prays to a new spirit with miraculous results. When the blessing turns to tragedy, the distraught couple appeals to Gita, a jhangrini or healer, revered as a powerful spirit medium. Gita's own crisis of faith and, perhaps, her stunning beauty, forces all three to a dizzying climax, leaving the lines between secular and spiritual desires eerily blurred.

Conversations with 92 year old Kamlabai Gokhale, a pioneering actress of the Marathi stage and the first lady of Indian film. The documentary gives an impression of the history and growth of Indian film and theatre as it was experienced by a woman who struggled against the social structures of her times.

Set in the Himalayan districts of Kumaon and Garhwal, the film explores the lives of three generations of women, ending with the fourth, a small girl on the threshold of growing up.

In a poetic hour and a half, director Mani Kaul looks at the ancient art of making pottery from a wide variety of perspectives.

A seventeen year old girl, who is very carefully brought up by her well-to-do parents, on completion of her school studies, has to make a decision regarding her future.

Discusses Malthus's theories of population and the causes of poverty. As film contrasts the 19th century poor in Scotland with today's poor in India, it takes on the international population "establishment", challenging the entrenched view that overpopulation alone is responsible for poverty and environmental destruction.

Skin Deep is an exploration of body images and self perception among contemporary urban, middle class women in India - feelings of being too dark, too fat, too old that everyone experiences and attempts to come to terms with. In India, as elsewhere, a woman's identity is first and foremost an extension of her physicality, whether by societal dictates or her own complicity. The film traces the dynamics of the eternal search for the ideal femininity and how it permeates the self-image of contemporary women. Shot in the form of a "docu-feature", it recreates interviews with various women into six first-person narratives which comprise the structure of the film. It is a playful, engrossing and articulate film on women's complicated and contradictory relationships with their bodies.

This documentary film traces the struggle of Indian auto workers of the Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar, near Delhi, in forming a union. Investigating the underbelly of class conflict and exposing a widespread system of injustice, the film focuses on the repression faced by the workers and their criminal prosecution.

A fourteen minute cine-poem, Memories of Milk City catches Ahmedabad at a time of transition, peeling away layers of textures, gestures and sounds, tripping over a culture and a language at war with themselves.

Journeying across Varanasi, Lucknow, and Muzzafarpur in India, this documentary film traces the lost traditions and the culture of tawaifs (courtesans of North India), particularly through a song sung by Rasoolan Bai, "Lagat karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" and its lesser known, earlier version "Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" (recorded in a 1935 Gramophone recording). Weaving the past with the present, the film spans between personal stories as it interacts with historical events, ultimately leading to the decline of a great art form.

A personal film about a city that may only exist in a film or on TV; a film about various dreams about Calcutta. It starts with a variation on the first image of Francis Ford Coppola's ‘Apocalypse Now’ and takes the spectator along through a strange file full of ideas and images of the city. Some images come from the North - Hollywood films and European television. The commentators are a local, traditional painter and an Afro-American video-artist from New York. [Echo Park Film Center // LA FilmForum]