The Headscarf

In a culture that thrives on the idea of choice, it seems reasonable to want to choose to wear a bikini over a headscarf. I say this with an awareness that this is my personal opinion. I am not interested in anyone agreeing or disagreeing with me. If someone is, then it is just the way the world is-people agree and disagree all the time.
But I did not grow up in a culture where wearing the bikini was on obvious choice. In my family the hijab or the burqa as it is called (mind not the burkha) was a way of life for my grandmother, aunts and cousins. My mother modified this tradition in the years we lived in Delhi by covering her head with a milder cotton gauze cloth rather than the black one. But even now I have nieces and sisters who wear the hijab/headscarf.
For a long time I was judgmental about those in my family who would cover themselves. It sort of bordered on a certain kind of understanding of them and I felt that they were not too brave. I would wonder why don;t they rebel and react. What makes some women so accepting of whatever is offered to them.
And then I came to America. This was 2009.
I am still wondering what has happened in these two years that in Feb 2012 I ordered my first headscarf.
I don't know if I want to wear it forever but I most definitely want to celebrate this feeling of walking on the streets bearing a strange anonymity. It seems like a practice that defies mechanisms of surveillance and it also takes away from the pain of being watched all the time.

A Separation: A Beautiful Film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjTkXGRhy9w


To say that I found this film beautiful would not be enough. Nor would it do justice to the layers with which the story is told. A very rare exploration of a middle aged man dealing with divorce, a daughter and a father suffering from Alzeimers, and a very human exploration at that. In the whole way divorce in Muslim cultures has been represented and understood, it has been the woman at the hands of a man and Shariah law.
Here is a rare and unique story of breakdown and the impossibility of dividing what we love and share.
The performances are brilliant beyond words and because I am doing a class on Actor/Director Improvisational Collaborations this semester, so much of the process of creating those performances was clearer. There were lines that just couldn't have been written and there were moments that had emerged out from developing backstories and subtext.
It is a pleasure to watch such a work of art and honesty.

visible video grain

I was recently writing about representations of Indian Partition, 1947 in Popular commercial Hindi film, namely with reference to Train to Pakistan and trying to answer for myself the reasons behind the narrative closure of a history that has essentially remained open ended despite being past. One of my motivations and fascinations was the recent reading of literature around Trauma Studies and Cathy Caruth's Freudian reading of Hiroshima Mon Amour.
If trauma is a form of belated address in the consciousness of the survivor, how does one read the creation of profilmic situations rooted in real dialogues, action and reaction shots?
This coincided with making final versions of The Ghetto Girl that if I am to go by suggestions of a friend, should include detailed text plates about Babri Mosque riots, Mumbai/ Delhi of 1992, Gujarat in 2002, the Batla House Operation among others.
I wonder if it is my pure incompetence or if it has to do something with the fact that it is impossible to produce an absolute picture when you are on the inside.
For that initial train that left in 1947 it was thought that the business would be settled once and for all.
But then there was a train in 2002 following which the streets of Gujarat very much reminded me of scenes from Partition in the documentary photographs of Margaret Bourke White.
So as I wrote that paper and am unable to write the absolute text plates of evidence, a testimony from the Gujarat camps that were set up in the aftermath of the ethnic strife, keeps coming back to me.
As I logged and transcribed it in an editing room as voluntary work with the Shared Footage Group, the woman recounted how they burnt her home and how she was witness to the killing of her neighbours.
After almost ten years, it is just her face and the visible video grain that I retain alongwith a feeling that I shall never be able to put together complete pictures.

deja-vu in Boston

As you get down from the South Street Station in Boston and walk towards Emerson College there is a very ordinary turn. Outside some superstore, there is a tree and people usually sit there when they either have nothing to do or are sick with too much doing.
As a kid I had fantasies of being a timeless traveller and that's perhaps the reason why I collect shot glass souvenirs of every city I visit. They sit on my refrigerator door and quietly remind me of the places that I can mark as visited on a rather obsessive map.
These travel fantasies from the past make me do really crazy things if travel is involved-I can carry reams and reams of paperwork through travel with a promise of sitting through a night in a dorm and meeting writing deadlines if it is a place I have never visited before.
At times I have sat through planes journeys of more than 24 hours but the place-ness of the destination is something that can relieve all travel related stress and I have found myself obsessively walking through city streets and figuring things out.

But this one road crossing in Boston- a place, a non place, an every place.
I can't say if I dreamt it the night I reached the city but the third day as I walked through it the first time, I had a feeling I had been here before.
And no. Not in my wildest fantasies had I been a traveller to Boston.
In the deja-vu, that place is inhabited by a Chinese family-the father wearing a white hat to ward off the sun. His fiver year old son perhaps whining for an ice-cream. A woman in red-aloof, apart. She is the mother to the boy.

It is this image that refuses to go. In doing so it reminds me of the ways there are places that look so similar to this-they are points on a map that spreads over Delhi, Bombay, Toronto, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Madrid, Jakarta...perhaps even more.
In post globalized times as places and markers collapse, what is it that defines a place?

For Nargis Aunty.

There is a narrow lane that leads to her home.
I learnt that she is no more.
but in the interstices that lay between the lane, door. hers and mine
I have discovered a spot that is full of memories-hers and mine.

Her face is always there.
It was there as I was playing a little postman in the afternoons
passing love letters between her son and his lady love.
It was there when I had folded my skirt a little above knee
and feared what if she quotes from the qoran if I meet her on the street.
It was there in the little box of pearl jewels she put in my palm.
I miss that warmth.

She forced us to sing Iqbal on the Republic Day function
She would order tents,food and celebrate in the street.
She would draw my mother into doing very crazy things.
A picnic on a hot summer afternoon in the Delhi Zoo to say the least.

May her soul rest in peace.
May she smile down on us reading this.
-March 29th 2011.

I don't want to pretend that this is a poem.
It is just an attempt at saving her memories.

Trailer: Four Women and a Room

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbPZEuRDTio

Listening to Kathryn Ramey

http://emerson.academia.edu/KathrynRamey
I have been editing from over 80 hours of footage shot over a year between New Delhi and Philadelphia. The footage ranges between cellphone videos, Flipvideo, HDV cameras, Canon 7D and the Canon 5DMarkII.
This is film about being homesick and being in love with a place. Can you miss a place like you miss someone you've grown to love? How do you deal with an absence of a place?
I had entered the listening of Kathryn Ramey's Lecture with some of these thoughts.
The rest of the notes are in my little paris diary.
but am putting little words here so that I remember:
sculptural editing
optical printing
film vs video vs 7D/5D MArkII
Vulnerability of character and vulnerability of film
Ektachrome
Jonas Mekas
Chris Marker
travelling matte technique in optical printing
anthropology has a tortured relationship with image
you've been conditioned by the images of the past into how you will look at images of the future
intersection of anthropological and avant garde
anthropology is what anthropologists do
Avant Garde practice: people who work in expanded networks of academia and institutions who seeks to push the boundaries in a way mainstream would not do.
Art Markets, Museums, Film
Maya Deren Robert Gardner
1980: Trinh Minh Ha/post modernism/Jay Reubes
Rupture od stories and many stories.

'Four Women and a Room' screened at the 9th International Social Cinema Conference 2010

http://calcuttatube.com/9th-international-social-communication-cinema-conference-2010/66167/comment-page-1/#comment-282566

on IBN Live a couple of years back.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/muslims-rediscover-faith-strength/23855-3.html
Only that my discomfort has grown since in the manner of a disquiet.

Photos from work.

Certificate Course on City Narratives in Literature and Cinema.

From Majlis, Mumbai, India.
www.majlisbombay.org
Am sharing this here for those of you who might be interested.

This is to announce the inauguration of the certificate course on City Narratives in Literature and Cinema on 9th July at Mini Auditorium, Research Unit Building, SNDT University, Juhu Campus.
www.cinemacitycourse.com

Programme (Open to Public)

9th July
Cinema City Exhibition opens at 5pm

Tea at 6.30pm

7pm
Inauguration by Prof Chanda Krishnamurti, Vice Chancellor, SNDT Women’s University

Cultural Collaboration: Address by Marla Stukenberg, Director, Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai

City Narratives in Literature and Cinema: a pedagogical initiative. Introduction by Mitra Parikh, Head of the Dept., English and Dept of Post Graduate Research and Studies, SNDT Women’s University

Film screening: Anna Sound Please Director: Madhavi Tangella
Tucked behind the bus stops or under the flyovers of Bombay run illegal / unofficial shacks of cinema that double up for shelter and linguistic refuge for migrant wage workers.


7.40-8.40pm

Panel Discussion: Cinematic Cities and City Cinema
Speakers: Madhusree Dutta, Curator, Cinema City project, Rahul Srivastav, author and social scientist and Sadanand Menon, art and media critic. Moderator: Kaushik Bhaumik, Film Historian


Cinema City: Research Art and Archive Exhibition
Foyer of Mini Auditorium, SNDT University, Juhu Campus.
9th, 10th and 12th July
3-7pm

The Western Suburb: Video Installation on Sweatshops of Cinema
Avijit Mukul Kishore, Mamta Murthy, Rikhav Desai & Found Footage Archive of Majlis
Traces the network of production units, hidden in holes in the wall, that produces the Cinema.

Cinema City Lived: Book in the ware house
Editor: Rohan Shivkumar, Text: Hansa Thapliyal, Design: Abhinav Shaw, Research: Design Cell, KRVIA
Compilation of the marks of cinema in the body of the city as the production process shifts from materiality to digitality.


Bioscope: Cinema-City-Modernity Dateline
Kausik Mukhopadhyay
The playful randomness in the functioning of bioscope is renegotiated to destabilize the linearity of historicity.

Calendars: Iconography in 20th Century
Art Works by Multiple Artists, Research: Shikha Pandey
The works are based on found images and the individual artists’ readings of the public imagination of the time.

Interactive Archive
Research by Majlis and Design Cell, KRVIA, Graphic Design: Abhinav Shaw
Software Design: Thatzit
Participatory excavation of the city of entertainment.


Creative Director and Curator: Madhusree Dutta
Visual designer: Kausik Mukhopadhyay

Please do come and inform the fellow city enthusiasts.


Marla Stukenberg Madhusree Dutta Mitra Parikh
Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai Majlis SNDT Women’s University.

Meeting Judith Redding

Sometimes you meet someone outside a bathroom/washroom and have a marvelous conversation.
You've been dying for a good conversation and it happens right outside a bathroom-while you are in a queue.
That's exactly where and how I met Judith Redding last evening.

In the next 20 minutes we discussed Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan's nose, Legalization of sex work in India, 'Tales of The Night Fairies' and 'In the Flesh' vis-a-vis 'Born Into Brothels', appeal of the 'innocent East', the use of children as innocent subjects that fits so well in the west's perception of India, the march to Sundance, Oscars, Academy and more films about 'little brown people'.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1878067974/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=
I absolutely love the cover of her book 'Film Fatales' (Seal Press, Seattle, Judith Redding and Victoria A. Brownworth).
It is a collection of interviews with Independent Women Directors and spreads across 'Documentary', 'Experimental', 'Narrative' and 'Beyond the Director's Chair' sections.
Some of my favourites are there too- Pratibha Parmar, Su Fredrich, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Mira Nair and Susan Seidelman.
The book is a reflection on the fact that apart from a rare Kathryn Bigelow why women directors across the globe run into a 'celluloid ceiling'. Spanning 32 interviews with some of the most accomplished independent women filmmakers, the book is my next read.

Judith tells me about the days she worked in Airline Security and with a laugh she says that with a name like 'Ambarien Al-Qadar' I invite suspicion and curiosity. Suspicion because it sounds so 'middle eastern' and curiosity because young women my age have no record of being terrorists. I tell her that's something I encounter quite often. And seriously, am a bit sick of thinking about it constantly. Not that something really major has happened but the urdu word 'khalish' perfectly describes the feeling- a slight tingling, a mild irritation.

This brings me to a facebook update by a friend some days back.
It read: If you are a Muslim, and an artist, is 9/11 the only framework granted to you?
My answer seems like a series of questions at the moment: you make art to be able to deal with the world and find your place in it. This is my rather simple, could be read as silly way, of understanding the motivations to make art.
This constant questioning, the constant reminding of who you are, where you come from, what clothes you wear, did you go to a Madarsa, does your mother wear a Hijab, does your father wear a beard, do they offer prayers, is your brother a willing fundamentalist, do you wear a scarf back home, the hows, the whys, the where.
So your art becomes a way of thinking through some of these questions.
My question remains in the spirit of a whim or a fancy-why am I asked these questions all the time? Why do people expect me to answer?
I guess its time we reframe this question and ask
'with what framework we; and by we, i imply myself and the rest of the liberals, the not so liberals, the secularists and the pseudo-secularists; do we view works made by artists/people who are Muslims. What is the lens we use to 'frame' them. How we see and feel about them in the everyday.

So much for today. I get back to editing.
Meet you Judith Redding soon. was such a pleasure!

The Linda Blackaby Workshop: The Film Festival Programmer's Confidential

Here is a list of what the pre-screeners are asked to look for in a film.
Pre-screening is the most preliminary stage in a festival.
Rows of DVDs and stacks of press kits are meticulously run over.
Anyone in the business of independent media making is familiar with the 'aura', the almost mythical nature of stories that surround the process.

I found this bit hilarious from Linda Blackaby's list :

1. At what point in the film did you laugh?
2. At what point did you lose the film?
3. At what point did the structure go haywire?
4. Why should anyone pay $10 to watch this film on an evening out?
5. When did you feel that despite the stunning cinematography, the subject matter lacked innovation?
6. Did you feel that the subject matter was done hundred times over?
7. Did the balance between 'good film' and 'good cause' go off the hook?
8. Did the film go too far in trying to do something too 'cool'?
9. Did you feel the filmmaker was trying to be gimmicky for no reason?
10. At what point you feel that the 'film on screen' and the 'film in the press kit' seemed like two different scripts?

Postcards from the Islamic Heritage Festival

but as I sat and swayed (read the previous post for the thread)
I wondered about the constant choosing of spaces and places.
As you transit, you make new nooks and corners.
That then becomes a way of seeking comfort and a way of being.
This search for that most comfortable place takes you to new places and newer ideas..
the comfort of mind and ideas, the freedom to say and be.
to this evening that I spent
as the breeze rose through me.

Islamic Heritage Festival by the Delaware

Soul Food, Lady Mahogany and Lady Mis-Understood have swayed me this evening.
This was at The Islamic Heritage Festival by the Delaware.
Lady Mahogany and Lady Mis-Understood are rap-performers.
As I sat munching over the delicious soul food by the river, the crowd swayed to their music.
I saw women wearing head-bands and head covers dance and sway to music.
In the world I grew up-a south asian Muslim home, such a free wheeling mixing of men and women was largely forbidden.
Fine fine..the women wore hijab and the rest.
But as I sat and swayed, I wondered what I had not experienced transiting through the male and female spaces as they existed.
Words strangely sounded familiar and so were names-Nasiha, Mariya, Parshaheen...
I want to meet Lady Mahogany and Lady Mis-Understood again.
I want to sit by the river and sway.

Call for an Actor/Actress

I have posted this call on JamiaLive and Jamia Nagar pages on Facebook.
This is a call for an acting opportunity in a film that I am directing in Zakir Nagar this July.
It is a love story about Irfan- a young man who lives in Batla House, Irfan has just lost his job.
Auditions take place on 25th July.
This is a great opportunity to build a portfolio if you are interested in directing/acting.
I shall also do a comprehensive skill development filmmaking workshop.
A reasonable payment is there.
No prior acting skills needed.
You need to be 18-28 yrs and willing to work this summer!If you are interested, please contact me at ambarien09@gmail.com.


After the success of posting calls for taxi drivers in subways and gas stations, I am convinced that this will work!
A special call is being put up at Le Femme, my mother's salon.
watch out.

Women and Make Up: A Story from Gilgit.

I woke up to a story in my inbox. A friend shared it. Thanks Yousuf.

It reminded me of many such stories I grew up listening.
I should say that the source of such stories was my equivocating cousin sister, Maimoona aapa.
Maimoona aapa would have us enthralled on summer afternoons with the genre of the horror/thriller.
She expected us, like her, to become devout muslim women who went to the 'Ijtamas', covered their hair and walked with dignity. But Maimoona, like many of us, had fire in her soul. On many occasions, she would chose not to do none of these things.

First the story: Somewhere in Gilgit. ( As an aside, I think that the age of globalization dawned on the Muslim world much before anything else. So, Dick Cheney in his report of 9/11 was not saying something new. We all grew up listening to stories of Baghdad, Iraq, Mecca and Gilgit.'

But first the story:

"O Believers of Allah and the Prophet PBUH, listen to this story from
Gilgit, and if you don’t believe me go to Gilgit and ask the people if
this did not happen. The incident was that a man was passing by a
graveyard when he heard a voice from inside a grave saying please take
me out I am alive.

People went to the local Maulvi and he said that no one living could
be buried in a grave and gathered a group and went to the graveyard
and began digging it up. After the grave was opened they found a woman
who was completely naked. She arose and said after you have removed
the dust please bring me clothes to hide my nakedness.

The clothes were brought and she put them on but after doing so ran
away from the crowd and locked herself into her house. When people
called she would not open the door. Finally she said only the
strongest among you should enter. Then a few strong men entered but
what they saw was horrendous. The woman had no hair on her head.

They asked why was her skull without hair? She replied that when she
was living normally she would go out of the house with her hair open.
Allah punished her for this and when she was in her grave the angels
came and began to uproot her hair one by one with their hands so that
even the skin came off.

Then the people asked her to show her face. But when she opened her
face the men fell down in a swoon. The upper jaw was there but there
was no lower jaw. All the teeth were showing but there was no lower
jaw and no lips. Think if we had lost out lower jaw would our family
come near us?

People asked how did this happen? She replied that when she was normal
she applied lipstick to her lips to look beautiful. When my lips were
being cut off a voice said we had not made you so ugly that you had to
show your painted lips in the market. Now this is your punishment.

When the people of Gilgit and Naran heard this they started crying,
which is good because Allah says when you see something like this it
is right to cry. If you hear the Quran being recited you can cry as
that inclines Allah to forgive your mistakes and sins.

O women, Allah made you beautiful but you have taken to putting powder
on your face and made yourself ugly. How can Allah like this? When you
cook and someone mixes too little salt in it would you like it? Allah
too doesn’t want you to spoil the gift of beauty he has given you. If
you abide by His rules he will build a palace for you in Paradise".

Many years ago, I guess I must have been 9, I was called in by my neighbours to translate an 'ijtama'.
The scene went something like this: none of the women in my neighbouhood at that point knew English.
A team of women 'ijtama' leaders was visiting from Australia.
If I remember correctly, I sat looking at these women, trying to translate what they were saying into urdu/hindi..not understanding a word.
because they said stuff exactly like this-if you show skin, it will be burnt black.
If you do not obey your husband, you can be whipped. If you do not tie your hair, you'd rise naked on the day of judgement.

I am sure that many of my friends ..those of us who grew up in Zakir Nagar-Sabina, Tayyaba, Naazo, Naseem, Arshi, Khamsa, Iffat, Parveen; all heard similar stories but did such different things. It was as if we were trying hard to prove that these stories were wrong. ..

The Gharara ,the Terrorist and many cities in between.

'Thousand and one Stories about the Gharara' was a facebook group I started a year ago.


The piece of garment had evoked many love filled, abandon driven stories in the past.
For me, these stories were in dialogue with the ones I gathered about the Hijab.
Both were funny, hilarious at times.
But the ones about Ghararas went without a mention of how 'they' perceived us.
They were without a mention of that 'despite the hijab, we were liberal, we wanted education, we wanted to see the world.'
The ones about the Gharara evoked crazy sleepless nights of trying to hem glitzy sequins onto the spread.
of the many romances that took place right when those glittery beads were being bought in the bazaar.
of the many journeys that took women out of the house..on the pretext of buying 'stuff'.

Today, when I logged onto the page, I found a friend had posted information about his new book: 7/7 Muslim Perspectives.
It is a book written in response to the 7/7 bomb blasts in UK in 2005- a record of what ordinary men and women were doing when the blasts happened.
I was traveling with 'Elsewhere' (Delhi, Madrid, Documentary 28 minutes, Muslim Youth) and also visiting my brother who at that time was studying at the Cardiff University.
That morning when the bombs went off, we were bound for London. we were in the subway.
The plan was that we would see London together during the day and then he would see me off at Heathrow.
The panic and silence at the subway station was ominous.
I wanted my brother to get back home and he would not leave me alone at the airport.
I finally convinced him.
he left me at Heathrow well 18 hours before check in.
I called a friend of his to ensure that he reaches home.
the night was spent staring onto the brightly lit terminals at the Heathrow, guarding my luggage, browsing at Body Shop and wondering what could have happened.

So when I found the post on my facebook page, I was reminded of the oddly sitting together things-the glittery gharara and Terrorism. In many ways, I expect this collage like feeling when I meet Sameena this summer.
Sameena, the one who weaves brocade patterns on Ghararas in Azamgarh.
In news reports they talk of Azamgarh as the 'nursery of terror'.

Meeting Bina: New York, June 13.

I had expected it to be a dry day. When we left Brooklyn, we expected it to be so.
Earlier that night we has randomly talked about so many things.
In Will's living room, there is always space for conversations and you don't feel uncomfortable taking positions.
We looked at the glittering sky through the living room window.
The Empire State Building stood nice and straight.
Will fixed a dinner for all six of us-tacos with hamburger.
And we sunk into his couch for more conversations.
I had returned from shooting at the Times Square . It was dizzy.
In between I did some tourist like things too and attended a couple of art openings where wine and cheese flowed.
At the NYU campus we caught free snacks: courtesy Hare Krishna Foundation!
Chickpea in tomato sauce and lemonade: chole and nimbu paani.

I met Bina at 'Pick Me Up'.
She sat grand, beautiful and full of glitter. She reminded me of a time.
The title of her recent play 'Muslim Glitter' stuck on me like the glitter from her finger tips.
In between discussing my work, we spoke about her other recent performance titled 'Afghan Women'.
I told her that things are very different when you listen to both the sides.
It is one thing to take a position on the war on terror.
It is completely different when you are left with no positions.
When you are listening to both the sides, the dialogues is internal.
I can debate with the other but what if that otherness hides somewhere within me?
The evening was throwing many more questions than answers.

Bina asks me what I think of art.
I tell her that I am currently re-reading 'Evidence of Suspicion'.
I enjoy things that dialogue with me. I am sick of monologues.
She laughs and talks about her days trying to earn a medicine degree at John Hopkins and being totally unconvinced by it.
A large part of it had to do with dealing with death. She could not stand someone dying.
"it is strange that after all these years of trying to escape from it, I realized that come what may, it would catch up with you.
As an artist working in post 9/11 America, the question of the killer and those killed does not leave me".

Shooting in New York

I have been away for a long while. Moving into a studio and managing groceries apart from the semester end work rush was rather heartening I must say.

The film 'Notes on Leaving and Arriving' takes me to film in New York this weekend.
A city I had always wanted to shoot in. And shoot with a small camera.
Am filming at the WTC, Times Square, Houston Street Taxi Drivers in Subways etc.
Am also meeting Bina Sharif: the well known Pakistani theatre artist who wrote and performed immensely on what happened post 9/11. She is to play act testimonies that I had collected in Jamia Nagar some eight years back.

So, usually when I work these days in my apt, I put the recorder on and listen to them again.
Some of them are funny about not being able to hang out in the streets.
Some of them are about loss of love and freedom. All of them are about women who live in this place called 'Jamia Nagar'. All of them, like me, in some way, love the place.

Am still trying to work my way through the complexity of conveying experiences of a place like Batla House.
A place 'on the dark side' to use Dick Cheney's classification of topographies in post 9/11.
I have watched 'Sur Name Viet Given Name Nam' over three times now.
Am struck by the film so completely.

This brings me back to the Theatre Professor I am still looking for:
two months back he opened the door for me as I rushed for class. 'You look like a Terrorist, I must say. You'd play a brilliant one.!'. Let me find you dear Professor. We need to talk.