3–8 October 2024
Ivy Lodge, Kasauli
Bina Paul, Surabhi Sharma, Arbab Ahmed, Prachee Bajania, Lubnah Ansari, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Maheen Mirza, Prateek Vats, Faiza Khan, Mukul Haloi, Abhinava Bhattacharya, Priyanka Chhabra
In October 2024, twelve filmmakers met at SKAP (SSAF–Kasauli Art Project) at Ivy Lodge in Kasauli to discuss a startling new development in India’s documentary scene. These filmmakers represented the gamut of India’s independent film: from fiction to the ‘personal’ film, from collective filmmaking to direct work on the archive, from the essay film to films working with documents. They were there to see and to talk about a new direction in what has come to be known as the ‘creative’ documentary: a genre of non-fiction filmmaking that is turning closer and closer to the modes of fiction.
Everyone was asked, as a way of introduction, to bring to Kasauli something that they wanted to discuss: it could be a memory, a film fragment, an object. Presentations thereafter as pairs or groups of three, and intense discussions, moved from the idea of marginality to the personal, from the safe zones of fiction to the precarity of independent practice.
The entire event was audio recorded, including several of the arguments and battles that – in true Ivy Lodge spirit – went on into the night.
It is expected that a book will be published by SSAF–Tulika Books drawing upon the presentations and the conversations.
This was the first residential programme in Kasauli since 1991: the first of many of the Kasauli Art Centre reimagined as SKAP by Vivan Sundaram.