International Seminar on ‘Writing Histories for Indian Cinema’

Organized by Department of Film Studies Jadavpur University

October 28-30, 2009, Vivekanda Hall, Subarna Jayanti Bhhavan

Subhajit Chatterjee

Anindya Sengupta

Jt. Coordinators

The agenda of the conference was to revisit the writing of Indian film history keeping in view the fact that some substance has accumulated in the area since Film Studies came into its own in India. The discipline has returned to important moments – the silent period, the studio era, the 1950s, the era of the mass film, etc. As distinct ways of approaching texts and forms developed, scholars have also tried to build models for contextualizing them in ‘history’, including ‘film history’. Approaches have varied from political economic orientation to local histories of institutions and personnel. The literature largely indicates the plurality - histories rather than a History - of Indian cinema, even as textual analyses remain focused on formal universals.

The central issues discussed in the conference included a) the need to rethink the models of historiography that present themselves spontaneously to the student of Indian cinema;

b) possibilities of imagining the historical contours of an Indian cinema that can do justice to the different regional industries; c) How to arrive at account of certain phases which all film industries have in common, eg., the advent of sound? d) Contemporary models of archival research and their relationship to pre-Film Studies critical paradigms .

The three-day seminar involved presentation of research papers, the closing session of each day being devoted to a panel discussion on a chosen topic related to the broad theme of the seminar. The list of speakers with a brief description of events is presented below:

Day 1

Papers

Virchand Dharamsey(Archaeologist & Independent Scholar, Mumbai)

Joppan George(The Media Lab, Jadavpur University)

Stephen P. Hughes (School of Oriental & African Studies, London)

Panel: Film History before Film Studies

Somen Ghosh (Independent scholar, Kolkata), Gopalan Mullick (St. Xaviers College, Kolkata) Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay (Dept. Of Film Studies, J.U)

The paper presentations on the first day focused on making sense of crucial historical markers in the early period of Indian cinema. Virchand Dharamsey commented on the generic and formal significances of interaction between stage and screen during the early sound period while Joppan George discussed the technological interactions and appropriations overseeing the transition into sound era. Stephen Hughes drew attention to earlier practices of film distribution and exhibition involving mobile networks such as traveling shows.

The panel discussion moderated by Abhijit Roy (Dept. of Film Studis, JU) focused on the traditions of film history writing before the advent of Film Studies as an academic discipline. Focusing on contribution of film society movements in India, the panelists critically revisited various accounts of indigenous filmmaking practices both as artistic discourse and as popular form.

Day 2

Papers

S.Theodore Baskaran (Independent scholar, Bangalore)

Subhajit Chatterjee(Dept. of Film Studies, Jadavpur University)

M. Madhava Prasad (The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad)

Panel: Film Studies, Archives, Film history

Madhuja Mukherjee (Dept. Of Film Studies, J.U), Ravi Vasudevan (Sarai-CSDS, Delhi), Stephen P. Hughes (School of Oriental & African Studies, London), Gayatri Chatterjee (Film & Television Institute of India, Pune)

The second day’s papers focused on archives, academic research and their relation to critical accounts of Indian film history. S.Theodore Baskaran’s paper addressed the historical dimensions of the concrete problems pertaining to archival resources on Indian cinema while Subhajit Chatterjee’s paper focused on ways in which alternative models of archival research could redefine the social significances of Indian cinema within a broader domain of popular culture. M. Madhava Prasad’s paper on the other hand critically addressed contemporary academic accounts, commenting on various configurations of ‘Indian film history’ in relation to broader histories of the Cinema.

The panel discussion, titled ‘Film Studies, Archives, Film history’, moderated by M. Madhava Prasad, centred around archival research and various revisionary models for history writing that have emerged since the institutionalization of Indian cinema studies, focusing on studio histories as well as contextual readings that often reveal multiple layers within popular film forms.

Day 3

Papers

Gayatri Chatterjee (Film and Television Institute of India, Pune)

Ashish Rajadhyaksha (Centre for the Study of Culture & Society, Bangalore)

Ravi Vasudevan (Sarai-CSDS, Delhi)

Panel: Digital Archives: Challenges before History

Ashish Rajadhyaksha (Centre for the Study of Culture & Society, Bangalore), Anindya Sengupta (Dept. Of Film Studies, J.U), Moinak Biswas (Dept. Of Film Studies, J.U),

The final day’s paper presentations elaborated on various modes of classification and reading of popular film texts and forms. Gayatri Chatterjee and Ravi Vasudevan commented of multilayered nature of popular texts often demanding alternative modes of enquiry that can address historical processes pertaining to construction of generic and formal complexities. Asish Rajadhyaksha’s discussed the technical as well as conceptual problems of textual classification commenting on the historically complex nature of such practices.

The final day’s panel discussion moderated by Subhajit Chatterjee, centred around the conceptual and practical challenges thrown by digital archiving practices. The discussants commented upon emergent digital tools and models that could redefine the formal and aesthetic conventions of archiving but also reflected upon the attendant conceptual difficulties in relation to production of critical accounts from digital databases.

The seminar ended following the valedictory session and vote of thanks.

The Media Lab, Dept. of Film Studies

Presents

Fellows’ Seminar

 Speakers

Arijit Bhattacharya

Joppan George

Shruti Ghosh

Seminar Room, Dept. of Film Studies

August 28, 2009, 3 pm.

ALL ARE WELCOME

Free and Open Source software is one of the greatest tools in the hands of those who wish to challenge the notions of intellectual property (IP) and market-driven logics of human exchange. The Internet has opened up the space for a world-wide collective that believes in enriching each other’s lives through art and knowledge free from narrow conceptions of ownership and privilege. It has given rise to a new creativity on a global scale, from globally shared alternatives to profit-driven initiatives, towards a hope of re-inventing the Commons in the 21st century.

This workshop is dedicated to training in Linux-based tools along with critical overview on the philosophy, economics and politics of Free and Open Source Software. The workshop started by training sessions conducted by researchers and faculty members of JU-FOSS Resource Centre of Jadavpur University, led by Prof. Nandini Mukherjee. This was followed by theoretical session by Sri Dipankar Das, Senior Lecturer, Jaipuria College, University of Calcutta, who spoke on the philosophical and political aspects of Free Software movement. The final two sessions were conducted by Sunil Abraham, Director (Policy), Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, who made a couple of lecture-demonstrations on legal aspects of FOSS. The workshop was cordinated by Dr. Subhajit Chatterjee, Lecturer, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University.

Digital Media have opened up immense possibilities of exploring our daily lives, our environments, of documenting daily responses to our environs. The Tactical Media Workshop series organized in the Media Lab are camps where we acquire the know-how of meaningful intervention into everyday life even as we keep records of it.

‘Archiving the everyday’, the second workshop in the series was conducted by Nilanjan Bhattacharya (filmmaker and media artist) and Budhaditya Chatterjee (sound artist and sound designer). The workshop was coordinated by Dr. Subhajit Chatterjee, Lecturer, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University. With the help of experienced faculty, participants learned to explore her/his immediate environment - localities, nature, people - with sound and image, to use multiple, economical means to create a portable archive. Learning involved both introduction to the gadgets and the principles of use. The workshop produced a series of short media works where participants critically engaged with various subjects ranging from public transport experience, urban soundscapes to problems of urban planning & development, with the help of tools provided by the Lab.

The Interactive Workshop ‘Tactical Media 1: Campaigns, Campus, Conversations’ was conducted by the members of “Citizen’s Initiative”, Calcutta, (Dibyajyoti, Madhura, Insia, Trina), and Faculty members from Jadavpur University, which included Dr. Kavita Panjabi and Dr. Samantak Das. All the resource persons were either academicians or activists with technical competence in New Media forms and active experience in digital campaigning. The workshop was coordinated by Dr. Madhuja Mukherjee, Joint Coordinator of the Lab and Senior Lecturer of the Department of Film Studies.

The Workshop offered a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the basic ideas and techniques of campaigning with digital media. The new platforms emerging in New Media are radically transforming the possibilities of creative and critical communication. Through this interactive workshop, the Media Lab tried to share technical and critical knowledge regarding this transformation and particularly the effective uses of the new tools that are becoming increasingly affordable by the public.

The basic questions that were raised and addressed by the Workshop were: Shall we remain passive recipients of the media or get organized to make our own? Should we not enable ourselves to use technologies that are cheap and simple, and can articulate our interests?

While the keynote was delivered by Kavita Panjabi, Trina N. Banerjee spoke about their own experiences of the tactical use of media during the period of political crisis. Samantak Das spoke about his apprehensions about the validity and reach of web based activities. It was decided that a blog combating ragging/hazing would be set up. Initially the participants, which included young school students, media practitioners, as well as members of the NGO ‘Saffo for equality’, and women’s organizations, were given hands-on training on techniques of setting up a blog.

At the later stage, the participants were involved in collecting material for the blog, which included interviews of ‘victims’ and of members of JU anti-ragging cell. A special emphasis was given to issues of gender and sexuality. As of now, the blog includes information regarding the law to resist ragging/hazing, as well as testimonies of people who have experienced ragging/hazing, and some relevant audio and video material. The blog hopes to provide a space to young people and enable them to share their opinion and experiences regarding ragging/hazing in institutions.

To visit the blog, click Rag Picker

This workshop was a platform where collectors, archivists/researchers and granting agency members came together and tried to bridge the gap that exists between collectors on one hand and granters & archivists on the other. Abhijit Bhattacharya, Head Archivist, Centre for the Studies of Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), started the day with a presentation on the importance of creating digital archives to preserve data and also harped on the disadvantages of a digital archive. The next talk was on ‘Textual scholarship and principles of documentation’ by Professor Swapan Chakravorty, Department of English, Jadavpur University. This was followed by a presentation about the web-based platform called DSpace, which helps create digital archives. This was presented by Rajesh Das, Archivist (Documents and Collections) of The Media Lab. Hardikbrata Biswas, a researcher with the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, talked about the obstacles he faced while acquiring data, primarily photographs, from the collectors. Hardik is an IFA grantee, who is researching on urban middle-class women of West Bengal in photographs. Post lunch, Shubranil Sarkar, research fellow at the School of Cultural Texts and Records (SCTR), Jadavpur University, made a presentation of the archival work on Hindusthani Classical Music that has been going on at the School for the past few years. This was followed by a talk on Digital Humanities by Anindya Sengupta, Lecturer at the Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, and Moinak Biswas, Coordinator of the Lab. They explained the concept of Digital Humanities through three examples of how certain communities were building up archives through open platforms.

This workshop was organized as part of the  ‘Baseline Survey of the Teaching of Film Studies in West Bengal‘. The survey, as part of the ‘Small Grant Programme’ of Sir Ratan Tata Trust, was conducted by ‘The Media Lab’  for a period of 3 months starting on December 15, 2008. The objective of the Baseline Survey was to get a comprehensive picture of the present state of teaching of Film Studies in West Bengal with select reference to institutions in other states. The Survey aimed at generating data that would help address the problems faced by institutions in India running courses in/related to Film Studies. These problems can be both intellectual and material in nature. We are particularly concerned with the way Film Studies is taught at the undergraduate level. One important area of investigation was the large set of courses under disciplines like Mass Communication, Mass Communication and Videography, Journalism and Media Science which often incorporate components of Film Studies in their syllabi. The contemporary debates in Film Studies developed in an inter-disciplinary framework over the last 10-15 years in India and abroad are missing from the syllabi of most of the courses. The new digital regime of media and communications, across which cinema is constantly rediscovering itself, also seems to be inadequately addressed. Infrastructural facilities in institutions do not seem to be adequate either. With a view to intervene meaningfully in this scenario, the Survey wished to take stock of both the academic and infrastructural aspects of the teaching of Film Studies in India. Based on the report, the nature of intervention could be helping the institutions with academic and logistical resources, both locally and beyond, in the form of creating broader interactive platforms (eg. digital archives). The point was to create a truly vibrant and energetic network where inputs from researchers, archivists, practitioners and workers from various fields could enter into a critical dialogue.

What the One-Day Workshop examined through the discussions:

· The opinion of the teachers regarding the syllabi

· The facilities provided by the colleges and the various problems they face in everyday teaching

· Various narratives regarding the ways in which the departments were established

· Financial and administrative structure of the colleges/departments

· An idea about the professions of the graduates

· The receptivity of the institutions towards new educational tools.

The participants, who were teachers of Film Studies and allied disciplines in various colleges and universities in West Bengal, made brief presentations concerning the above points. Some of the major recommendations that came out from the workshop were:

-A drastic improvement of infrastructure is an immediate necessity

-The syllabus should be reasonably light and comprehensive, keeping in mind that it initiates students into the discipline of Film Studies. It should never aim to produce experts but to acquaint the students with the basics of film language, theory and history.

-The West Bengal College service Commission should duly acknowledge Film Studies and make provisions for inclusion of the subject under State Eligibility Test (SET) conducted by the Commission.

-A large number of important books in English and other non-Bengali languages need to be translated in Bengali. They will cater particularly to the students outside Calcutta who are generally weak in comprehending the English language.

- Teachers (mostly part-timers or sometimes a mix of part-timers and full-timers) should meet on a regular basis. The teachers strewn over various colleges under a university should also meet regularly to ensure a parity of teaching standards across institutions.

-Workshops for teachers of Film Studies at the undergraduate level should be regularly organized by a set of competent trainers.

-The salary of teachers should increase.

-Film Studies programmes should be prepared for a substantial crunch in State funding and resource in near future and should generate own funding from various sources.

-outreach programmes should be increasingly undertaken by the Universities/faculties teaching Film Studies,  to popularize the subject.

-Film Studies should be an honours subject at the undergraduate level.

-Books on model questions for the undergraduate courses should be published by the University.

-There should be an association of teachers of Film Studies where common concerns can be discussed.

- The Film Studies research fraternity should think of publishing some of its acquisitions and findings in book form. Internet is not accessible to everybody and cheap enough for underprivileged students.

-There should be efforts to make Film Studies and Mass Communication academically more connected to each other.

As part of The Media Lab’s continuous effort to bring together practitioners from various fields in a vibrant platform of creative exchange, a workshop was planned on ‘The future of celluloid’, the theme that was chosen for the first international conference organized by the Lab. While the conference focused more on the theoretical issues around the theme, the workshop was supposed to acquaint the participants with practices that could be taken as truly signposting possible futures of celluloid. It was decided right at the outset that the workshop wouldn’t engage in developing particular skills of the participants but would gather a small team to share skills, visual ideas, sounds and stories to create a short video using contemporary ideas and a global perspective.

Matt Hanson, author, film director and producer from UK, was invited by the Lab to conduct the workshop. Hanson is the creator of a series of projects which investigate cinema’s possible futures, namely ‘A Swarm of Angels’, ‘onedotzero’, and book projects including The End of Celluloid. As creator of A Swarm of Angels, he has been concerned with issues relating to Creative Commons, Free Culture, Open source culture, Crowdsourcing and File sharing. A known ‘Film Futurist’, as he loves to call himself, and an well-acclaimed expert in digital media and moving image trends, Hanson has made a number of successful and innovative short films (including the award-winning Salaryman 6 and City of Hollow Mountains) and a television series for Channel 4 (UK). Screen International has already labeled him an “International film visionary”. Forbes listed him among the ‘Ten People Who Could Change the World’ in 2007. According to Hanson, the aim of the workshop was to engage the participants with the creative and technical aspects of filmmaking in the digital age and to fuse European and Indian sensibilities in film for the new frontiers of online video being enabled by the Internet and digital technologies.

The participants came from various fields: painting, installation art, digital media practices, video filmmaking, creative writing and acting. Out of a total of 15 participants, 5 were existing students and 2 were ex-students of the Department of Film Studies. Participants ranged from undergraduate students to established filmmakers and art practitioners.

The 9-day workshop started with a series of lecture-demonstrations by Matt Hanson trying to acquaint the participants with practices concerning the future of celluloid. It was followed by exhibition of works by the workshop coordinator and by the participants. What was truly exciting for the participants was the whole process of reflecting and commenting on this set of works. The films that came up in the discussions as crucial points of references were Chris Marker’s La Jetee, Sans Soleil, Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville, Mamoru Oshii’s Avalon, Ryutaro Nakamura’s Serial Experiments Lain, Peter Greenaway’s short films and contemporary works of Bill Viola and Janet Cardiff. The participants, guided by their supervisor’s vision of crowdsourcing and alternative video form in projects like ‘The Swarm of Angels’, jointly planned to make a short video . The last 4 days of the workshop were devoted to the production of the film. All the creative and logistic works including scripting, visualizing, camerawork, editing, sound, graphics and production management were fully shared by groups of participants with an overall coordination by the supervisor. No external input was used for the completion of the film. The film was screened in presence of the university community and the wider public at a pre-announced and widely publicized closing ceremony on the 18^th of November at the Vivekananda Hall of the university. Following a discussion on the film, certificates were distributed among the participants by Prof. Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay, Professor at the Department of Film Studies. The workshop was coordinated by Abhijit Roy, Joint Coordinator, The Media Lab, and Reader, Department of Film Studies.

This was the first conference held under the aegis of The Media Lab. We wanted to turn it into an occasion for reflection on the tasks at hand then for the Lab as well as on the media world in which such a project had to find its intellectual location.

With each advance of digital techniques the demise of cinema returns to haunt us. Will the future of cinema dissolve into the widely scattered space of the image, both social and private in nature? What we have as reality on the ground is a confluence of celluloid and digital tools rather than a total replacement of one by the other. The existence of the ‘digital intermediate’ in mainstream filmmaking itself testifies to the interspersed functions of celluloid and electronic processes. On the other hand, the advance in digital tools itself is often measured against the standard of celluloid potentials, the latter providing the yardstick for reproduction of reality. The logic of exchange and convergence rather than total replacement is underscored, again, as we find cinema effortlessly incorporating the video in its frame of vision, in its movements, in self-inflicted diffusion of the cinematic into protean forms of image and sound.

Will the future of cinema be its dissolution into other formats? Will it exist side by side with the displacing agents? Will the cinematic sustain even as the cinema mutates? Can we write on cinema with the same categories and objects in view in a few years from now? With such questions buzzing in the backdrop, we wanted to host this colloquium to connect the concerns of Film Studies with concerns about the futures of cinema. Film and media scholars, visual artists and media practitioners came together to reflect on questions of history-writing and archiving of film, critical and practical adaptations of the medium, and the reformulation of Film Studies as a discipline in the face of challenges brought about by the digital media on the one hand and what is known as Digital Humanities on the other.

The conference, held on November 7 & 8, 2008, was supported by the Navajbai Ratan Tata Trust and Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai. The venue was the Vivekananda Hall, Jadavpur University. It was inaugurated by Prof. Pradip Narayan Ghosh, Vice-Chancellor, Jadavpur University (JU). The two conference coordinators were Abhijit Roy and Dr. Madhuja Mukherjee, Joint Coordinators of The Media Lab.

Titles of the papers/panels were: The challenges of film preservation in the digital age; Of jesters, clowns and pranksters: Video responses on Youtube and the condition of collaborative Authorship; Film Studies and Digital Humanities: Conjectures on a possible interface; The Pasts and Futures of Celluloid; Beyond the frame: how film can escape the cinema; Together against the mafia: Godard, Scorcese, Bit Torrent; Photoshop landscapes and ‘after-narratives’: On the digital futures of Bollywood; Digital mediations: Interface between celluloid and New Media; Images beyond the screen: Publics, Critiques, Mobilizations.

Scholars, who made presentations at the conference, were: Josef Lindner, Preservation Officer, Academy Film Archive, Los Angeles; Matt Hanson, independent filmmaker and artist from UK; Sebastian Lutgert, independent writer, programmer and artist from Berlin; Peter Reiner, film critic, Christian Science Monitor, USA; Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore; Madhav Prasad, Professor, Centre for European Studies, The English and Foreign Language University, Hyderabad; Jeebesh Bagchi, Senior Fellow at SARAI, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi; Manas Ghosh, Lecturer, Department of Film Studies, JU; Abhijit Roy, Reader, Department of Film Studies, JU; Nishant Shah, PhD student at CSCS; Madhuja Mukherjee, Senior Lecturer, Department of Film Studies, JU; Anindya Sengupta, Lecturer, Department of Film Studies, JU; Arijit Bhattacharya, Shruti Ghosh and Jopann George, Project Fellows at the Media Lab and T.Vishnu Vardhan, PhD student at CSCS.

The papers presented at the conference are going to be collected in the 8th issue of the Journal of the Moving Image.

This workshop was conducted by 3 legal experts and media artists, Namita Malhotra (Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore), Lawrence Liang (Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore) and Shaina Anand (Independent Media Artist, Mumbai). The workshop coordinator was Dr. Subhajit Chatterjee, Lecturer, Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University.

The inaugural speech was given by Dr. Moinak Biswas, Head, Dept. of Film Studies and Coordinator, The Media Lab. He began by introducing the aims, methods and practices that constitute the Media Lab as a unique space facilitating research and initiation into the growing practical interface between academics, digital media and art practices.

The series of lectures, screenings and demonstrations that introduced the field and emerging debates to the participants were conducted by Namita Malhotra. Her discussion opened up a series of pertinent issues informing contemporary debates around Law and the Image , broadly around three basic paradigms : Laws regarding images, creation of the “Law” through the image and legal readings of Images. The following two sessions on September 17 and 18 were oriented around a set of readings that addressed the significant issue of digital reproduction and copy culture. The discussion was set forth by a couple of short screenings such as Copy Shop (Virgil Widrich, 2001) which demonstrated how media artistes and filmmakers themselves were beginning to confront the issues of duplication and its various cultural ramifications thereby driving media scholars to engage with such debates. The ongoing lectures were followed on September 19 by the screening of a recent film by popular artiste Michel Gondry (Be Kind, Rewind, 2008), which in a humorous vein dealt with some of the significant debates raised in the earlier workshop interactions. Sessions on September 21^st consisted of a set of screenings and presentations curated by Namita in order to introduce the range of critical debates around the issue of media surveillance in its numerous forms. The screenings included short experimental films which utilized modern survelliance technologies to chart personal narratives. At the other end of the spectrum were recent documentary projects from India like The Great Indian School Show (Avinash Deshpande, 2006), which presented a lurid yet sensitive account of various political appropriations of surveillance technologies at regional levels. Sessions held at the Vivekanda Hall on September 22 and 23 were open sessions conducted respectively by Shaina Anand and Lawrence Liang. Anand’s interactive talk and audio-visual presentation titled ‘Surveillance and Tactical Media’ centred around the problematic issues raised by the rising network of surveillance technologies that are gradually penetrating various aspects of the global citizen’s public and private lives.

Lawrence Liang’s presentation in the next session titled ‘Legal Imaginations: Interfaces of Law and Cinema in India’ focused on the dynamic and often astounding relationships between world of legal theory and film theory. His presentation consisted of two parts–Firstly it sought to examine the social life of law in images to explore how the presence of questions of law and justice creates an idea of a cinematic jurisprudence which is unique and different from the jurisprudence of legal theory. The second part of the presentation looked at how the law makes sense of cinema as a legal object, and covered issues of censorship, spatial regulation and protection of film as property. He argued for an approach that could enable us to take law and culture more seriously as a critical area bridging the divide between legal theory and film studies.

The sessions on the following two days were conducted by Namita and focused on the practical projects by various artists in the field. Namitha introduced the participants to recent projects conducted by the Altenative Law Forum in the form of remixes, collages or digital interfaces (Kaun Mille Dekho Kissko, 2003; Now Showing, The Cinematograph Act, 1952) which were designed as critical interventions into the dominant representational modes in popular entertainment and academic enquiry. The next day was utilized in garhering and designing the materials and props as well as planting the installation object at relevant sites including a classroom door and a corridor in the vicinity of the Department. The prop consisted of a placard board and a poster announcing surveillance of the surrounding area designed to mimic the texture and colour scheme utilized by local University authtorities. The concluding day of the workshop began with an acknowledgment of the signboards as a part of installation project and the session in which all the participants along with the  resource persons shared their individual experiences on the workshop and its outputs. The workshop concluded with handing out of certificates to participants by Rimi B. Chatterjee, novelist and teacher of English at Jadavpur University.

This workshop was conducted by Abhijit Gupta, Artist, Abhik Mukhopadhyay, Cinematographer and Filmmaker, and Sanjeet Chowdhury, Filmmaker, Media Artist. The coordinator of the workshop was Dr. Madhuja Mukherjee, Joint Coordinator of the Lab. Supratim Roy and Bhagirath Halder, members of the Media Lab team, were technical assistants for the workshop.

The introduction of the artists was followed by the self-introduction of the participants- among them were  university teachers, writers and ‘graphic’ story-tellers, research students, lyricists, video artists, painters, and students from various institutions.

During the introduction, Sanjeet Chowdhury suggested that defining video art/digital art is difficult as it shifts with space and time. As a matter of fact, ‘change’ is the pulse of digital art, as it keeps reinventing itself. Madhuja Mukerjee discussed the day-to-day plan of the workshop and each participant was encouraged to produce their own digital work. Thereafter, the participants and the artists were taken to the screenings of the ‘40 years Retrospective of Video art/Digital art from Germany’ at Max Mueller Bhavan, Calcutta.

‘Understanding digital art’ was the primary topic of discussion on the second day of workshop. One of the suggestions was: ‘digital art’ is a juxtaposition of images on different planes and of different shapes or sizes to generate a visual experience, rather than necessarily a meaning-generating process. Spontaneity and abstraction of images are central to digital art, as when the mode of ‘projection’ itself becomes part of an art work. Besides projection, framing and materiality are facets which digital art share with cinema’. The question that came up  was ‘why art on digital media’? It was speculated that, ‘digital art de-familiarizes the everyday, and re-familiarizes the unseen’. Digital art, in a manner of speaking, is experiential rather than attempting to be communicative.

Next, screenings of digital films/art works by the Eclectic Crew (a group to which the experts belonged) was held to familiarize the participants the works of local artists: Abhijit Gupta’s Encounter, Daydream, Sanjeet Chowdhury’s Painter’s Equilibrium, One Day in the Life of Mr. Sil and Odyssey by Abhik Mukhopadyay. The experts spoke in detail how they had planned, scripted and executed their works.

Eminent artist, Chhatrapati Dutta, was special guest next day, and his digital art projects, Iconoclash, and Bone Mill Tales were among other works that were screened and discussed. This was also the day when the participants presented their ideas, which were subsequently analyzed by the experts.

The remaining 2 days of the week were utilized on developing ideas, scripting, formation of groups and charting shooting and editing schedules. The participants discussed their ideas individually with the experts. 

On the subsequent days the workshop moved beyond the Media Lab, and the participants were busy shooting/collecting images for their digital films/art work. While some of the participants used their own cameras (including handycams as well as HDV cameras), most of them worked with the Media Lab equipment, in presence of the senior artists, who at times helped the inexperienced participants with shot-taking etc. The editing was planned meticulously to finish all projects within working hours.

Through the mad rush hours, last minute corrections, and individual disagreements, eventually the final presentations emerged. Among the works that were created by the participants and screened on the final day were the ‘digital soundscape of the city’ put together by Subham Roy Choudhury, digital documentation of migrant labour at construction sites put together by Subhodeep Roy Choudhuri and Sheersha Mukherjee, ‘Infusion’ by Taniya and Arindam, digital work that juxtaposed work in progress on clay idols with advertisement slogans by Dipanwita, collage of filmic and commercial images in ‘All Fall Down’ by Raja Alam and Sambit Basu, ‘Retake’ showing the image of a woman intercepting well-known cinematic images of Calcutta by Madhuja Mukherjee and Epsita Haldar, a critical take on office space, the endless process of scanning texts and images by Spandana.

The final discussions dealt with the appraisals of the participants’ projects. An idea that came around was whether a ‘soundtrack’ can be defined as a ‘visual track’. The works were also analyzed on the basis of the impact of the ‘dead’ frames which could mar the flow of the films. The question of humour was another point of discussion as the experts gave their opinions on the digital works.

The Media Lab, in collaboration with the School of Media, Communication and Culture (SMCC), Jadavpur University, and Institute for Open Technology and Applications (IOTA), West Bengal, organized a day-long workshop on ‘Uses of Free and Open Source Software’ on Saturday, 9th of August, 2008, at Anita Banerjee Memorial Hall, Jadavpur University. IOTA provided the necessary funding and expertise for the workshop.

The programme was exclusively designed for the teachers and scholars of the Arts faculty of Jadavpur University. Forty Three participants attended the workshop. Prof. Sankar Kumar Sen, President of IOTA and formerly Vice-Chancellor of Jadavpur University, inaugurated the workshop after the welcome address by Prof. Nilanjana Gupta, Director of the School. Prof. Sen emphasized the efficacy of Free and Open source Software (FOSS) in the Indian context in his inaugural speech.

In the technical session, teachers from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Jadavpur University made presentations on various issues. Prof. Pradip Kr. Das made an insightful presentation on the idea of FOSS with particular reference to its social role. Dr. Sarbani Roy introduced the various aspects of the LINUX operating system and Chandreyee Chowdhury discussed aspects of OpenOffice. Web applications and Multimedia applications were demonstrated by Mridul Sankar Barik. Mat3 Impex, an organization for promotion of FOSS in Calcutta, made a presentation on Bangla Linux. Participants took an active part in the workshop with their queries and observations. The workshop ended with vote of thanks by Abhijit Roy, coordinator of the workshop and Joint Coordinator of The Media Lab.

The Media Lab was formally inaugurated by Prof. Pradip Narayan Ghosh, Vice-Chancellor of Jadavpur University, on July 15, 2008 at 4:00 pm. A brief function featuring an audio-visual presentation on the Lab was followed by a question and answer session with the audience and representatives of the Press. Some of the snaps from the inauguration ceremony:

Prof. Pradip Narayan Ghosh, Vice Chancellor, Jadavpur University

Prof. Biswajit Chatterjee, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Jadavpur University, with Prof. Ghosh

Dr. Moinak Biswas, Coordinator of the Media Lab, making a presentation

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Some of the pictures of The Media Lab being constructed:

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Subarna Jayanti Bhavan: