Five Films
Children of Mandala
2009, Color, 5 mins
A message from the economically displaced children of a slum colony in Mumbai who are educating themselves in the face of government apathy.
Production, Direction, Editing – Anand Patwardhan
Camera, Sound – Anand Patwardhan, Simantini Dhuru
Production Assistance – Trupti Kanade
Ribbons for Peace
Music Video 1998, Color, 5 mins
Made in the aftermath of Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, Ribbons gives new meaning to an old film song by Kishore Kumar – a kind of “Imagine” composed before the days of John Lennon.
With guest appearances by well-known movie stars like Naseeruddin Shah, Aamir Khan, Kittu Gidwani and Chandrachur, the film was made to counter a pro-nuke music video made by the political party in power.
Production – Shunyata
Camera, Direction, Editing – Anand Patwardhan
Music – Kishore Kumar
We are not your monkeys
Music Video 1996, Color, 5 mins
We Are Not Your Monkeys is a music video that reworks the epic Ramayana story to critique the caste and gender oppression implicit in it. Sung by Sambhaji Bhagat and composed by Sambhaji, the late Daya Pawar and Anand Patwardhan, the music video opposes the systematic oppression and negation of basic human rights of the underclass, in the name of religion and culture.
REVIEWS
It is not often that a five minute film subverts a conceptual framework passed on through the centuries with such clarity. …Anand Patwardhan’s film is an unsettling but liberating and moving experience. It is unsettling because it calls into question ideas passed on through the ages that we have internalized as “truth”. it is liberating because its relentless logic exposes the contradictions of a self-serving ideology. And it is moving because it is the clear voice of people we rarely hear.
Sumana Ramanan, The Independent
Camera, Direction, Editing – Anand Patwardhan
Production – Shunyata
Music – Kishore Kumar
Images you didn’t see
2006, Color, 5 mins
Global censorship of the war on Iraq has stifled the outrage that may have otherwise curtailed the ongoing atrocity of occupation. Not only have the real causes of war been hidden but also its effects. Most people see a sanitized and falsified version that feeds their complacence and sedates their conscience.
But one place where the truth cannot be totally hidden is the Internet.
“images you didn’t see” is a music video that interprets images gleaned from the net – images that either never appear in the mainstream media, or images whose import are masked behind a velvet curtain of global infotainment.
Production, Direction and Editing – Anand Patwardhan
Internet Research – Abhay Mehta
Music Lyrics – Bob Dylan
Sung by Peter, Paul and Mary
Special Thanks – Anonymous chroniclers of the Iraq war
OCCUPATION: MILL WORKER
1996, Colour, 22 mins
Textile mills were once the backbone of Bombay’s economy and provided the city its working class culture. Today, foreign investment and rising real-estate prices have made selling mill lands more profitable than running mills.
Mill ‘sickness’ is now an epidemic.
OCCUPATION: MILLWORKER records the inspirational action of workers who, after a four-year lockout, forcibly occupied The New Great Eastern Mill.
Camera, Editing, Direction – Anand Patwardhan
Sound – Simantini Dhuru
Production Assistance – Simantini Dhuru, Paromita Vohra, Shashi Mehta
