From Here To Here (2005) Works of Avijit Mukul Kishore

Directors: Madhusree Dutta and Philip Scheffner, India/Germany 2005, Video, 45 min; Photography: Philip Scheffner, Micz Flor, & Avijit Mukul Kishore; Editing: Philip Scheffner, Shyamal Karmakar.

The film is part of an ongoing interaction involving two film-makers from India and Germany. Both filmmakers embark on a journey starting from their own locations, in search of signifiers of blurred identities in the context of the two countries. The film is structured around video scribbles on overlapping identities in their own context and between the two filmmakers. The concepts of ‘here’ and ‘there’ form a central part of their investigation.

At what point does ‘there’ become ‘here’? Which patterns and mechanisms contribute to the concepts of ‘here’ and ‘there’? Each segment of the film registers the legacy of one section of moving people/concepts/goods between the two societies and how the other culture responds to it. The two filmmakers are not telling ‘one story’ - and if they do, then it is from two different ends. The combination of different multi-perspective elements leads to a fragile audio-visual network where fragments of the historical, political and identity-making conditions shine through, contributing to the definitions of ‘here’ and ‘there’.

Reference: immigration, images in cinema, photo albums, travel documents, travelogues, cabin baggage, cartographs...

Madhusree Dutta (Bombay) has been making non-fiction films since 1993. She is the executive director of Majlis, a centre for multi-cultural initiatives in India. The centre is involved in campaigning for cultural literacy, producing films and multi-disciplinary art works and a current affairs video archive.

Philip Scheffner is a filmmaker, curator and sound- and video-artist, based in Berlin. He directs and edits documentaries and video-art since 1992. He was a member of several art- and video collectives and took part in national and international art exhibitions and events. In 2001 he founded the media platform ‘pong’.

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