The Elemental You Film Festival

In collaboration with Kriti Film Club

Date: 21 Dec 24

Time: Session 1: 10.30 am – 12.30 pm, Session 2: 2.30 pm – 4.00 pm, Session 3: 5.30 pm – 8.30 pm

Location: KNMA Saket

Silent and animated; musical and visual; voiced and textured, the language of cinema unfolds itself to our senses, alongside the works at The Elemental You exhibition. This specially curated film festival will bring together non-fiction and fiction narratives to viewers, with facilitated conversations to enrich the whole experience. 

Session 1- 10.30 am – 12.30 pm

All that Breathes

Dir. Shaunak Sen | 90 mins | Hindi with Eng. subtitles | 2022

This film follows two brothers who run a bird hospital dedicated to rescuing injured black kites, a staple in the skies of New Delhi, India. In one of the world’s most populated cities, where cows, rats, monkeys, frogs, and hogs jostle cheekby-jowl with people, the “Kite Brothers” care for thousands of

these mesmerizing creatures that drop daily from New Delhi’s smog-choked skies.

1.30 pm – 2.30 pm | Lunch Break

Session 2 - 2.30 pm – 4.00 pm

Mau: The Spirit Dreams of Cheraw

Dir. Shilpika Bordoloi |8 mins | Mizo with English subtitles | 2023

This is a performance documentary film from Mizoram, through Cheraw (Bamboo dance) and ritual folklore, revealing the forgotten memory of the story of the mother who dies at childbirth. The film shows a re-imagined dance of the mother spirit. Bamboo Dance was performed as a way to pacify the soul of the mother who died in childbirth. Bamboo is part of the geo-political history of Mizoram and the many other states in the North-east of India. Hence the loss of this intergenerational maternal memory is the crisis of culture, the climate of a place.

The Mushroom Keepers

Dir. Naveed Mulki |16 mins | English, Khasi, & Garo with English Subtitles | 2024

This film explores the deep connections between fungi and the Khasi and Garo communities of Meghalaya, India. It delves into how fungi shape spiritual and cultural worldviews, revealing the intertwined loss of biodiversity and ancestral knowledge as old-growth forests diminish. Through intimate conversations with community elders, the film serves as both a reflection on cultural erosion and a call to action. It embodies the Fungi Foundation’s mission to foster research, education, and conservation of fungi while preserving the cosmovisions nurtured by fungal wisdom.

Murmurs of the Jungle

Dir. Sohil Vaidya |20 mins | Marathi with English subtitles | 2022

A grandmother tells a story to her grandson about the origins of their remote indigenous village in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra. As the mysterious morning slowly unfolds, spirits wander in the forest, and dark secrets buried in time slowly emerge. The trees whisper tales of the Gods and the ancestors. They say that you don’t die. Your spirit assimilates into the jungle. And while civilization, its beliefs, and the cycle of life, death, and rebirth continue, the forest stands eternal. A bridge between the old and the new.

Spirit of the Forest

Dir. Nandini Rao, Nirupa Rao, Kalp Sanghvi | 7 mins. | Kannada with English subtitles | 2022

A little girl stumbles into a sacred grove near her village in south India. She disturbs the spirit of the forest, who takes her on an adventure to illuminate the origins of this ancient swamp: from Gondwanaland, through the times of her ancestors, up to the present day. This film attempts to make plants more than just background scenery, with all flora and fauna accurate to the habitat. It is inspired by local practices of protecting relict forests through folklore grounded in scientific principles.

The Grasshoppers Sleep Here

Dir. Balaram J | 8 mins. | Malayalam with English subtitles |

A man comes with a mower to clear a grass field. He is interrupted by a girl who was sleeping on the grass.

A Glow Worm in a Jungle

Dir. Ramana Dumpala | 12 mins | Hindi with English subtitles | 2018

This film is about Hema Sane, a retired Botany professor, who has never used electricity ever in her life. Surrounded by nature, amidst a concrete jungle, she shares her philosophy of life with humour and wisdom.

5.00 pm - 5.30 pm | Tea Break

Session 3 - 5.30 pm – 8.30 pm

My Name is Salt

Dir. Farida Pacha | 92 mins | Gujarati with English subtitles | 2013

Year after year, just after the monsoon season has finished, thousands of families travel to a bleak desert in Gujarat, India, where they will stay for an endless eight months and extract salt from the earth, using the same painstaking, manual techniques as generations before them.

Open to registered participants only.