Lamakaan invites you to

Cinema Talk with filmmaker S Amarnath

followed by the screening of ‘Documenting Reality by Ranu Sharma’

Objective of this evening in the words of the filmmaker:

"Is it possible to engage a thought keeping fiction and non-fiction films on the same plane and explore

how we 'see' them?"

"In a place like Hyderabad, overpowered by 300-crore club mainstream 'films’, talking about no-returns-

promised documentary films is surely interesting and challenging; more so in a place like Lamakaan, with

such a diverse audience/ crowd hopping in and out. Given this backdrop, it is only natural to have

narrow popular notions about a documentary when you position it as another ‘film’.

After all it doesn’t have that money or stars; they don’t show in the theaters; they don’t ‘seem’ to have

any entertainment; they are too complicated to engage with; they show poverty, issues, problems and

what not! These are only a few but there are loads of other interesting popular notions we get to hear

only to make a Documentary film more complicated, inaccessible and one that’s boring. It’s an irony that

the history of Cinema starts with documentary film and today we ‘perceive’ it as ‘second cousin’ to the

mainstream fiction.

Being a film buff myself I have had my own journey of growing through these popular notions and

realizing how fun, empowering, adventurous and expressive documentary films can be. And took it up as

a career for the sheer excitement it promised. Through this talk I want to explore all the impressions/

ideas/ notions/ perceptions we as filmmakers/ audiences carry about documentary films and share my

own excitement about them as a practitioner leading to a collective realization of ‘ways of looking at

documentary films.'"

About the film being screened:

Documenting Reality

by Ranu Sharma

30 min, English, India

As an extension to his talk/ conversation, Amar will show ‘Documenting Reality by Ranu Sharma’ that

ponders over the ideas of reality, Point-of-view, politics and why we document things. The film explores

the ‘constructedness’ of reality and the processes behind establishing it in documentary films and delves

into how ‘truths’ are created. This film triggers a lot of questions about ‘ways of looking’ at audio-visual

materials produced around us in general and the people behind it.

About the speaker:

S Amarnath is an independent filmmaker from Hyderabad. He is an alumnus of Sri Aurobindo Centre for

Arts and Communication (SACAC), Delhi, and has been a film practitioner for the last 7 years. Extending

his association with SACAC, he worked as Course Co-ordinator, visiting faculty and screenings organizer

at their Twilight Film Club. He has catalogued about 1000 films for JDCA Film Forum, Delhi, for their film

archive and co-ordinated their annual film festival on Art & Artists in 2008 in Bhubaneswar.

His last film, Mana Kaloji, has had various screenings in Telangana, including the Hyderabad Literary

Festival in January 2015.

Surprise film screening:

After collectively consolidating all ideas around 'reality' the evening closes with a surprise film. This film

tries to further evoke ideas around 'truths' for you to sleep over with before you leave the venue.

You gotta stick around till the end to watch it coz it promises to be fun!

Entry -Free