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The final session on Day 1, 22 nd October 2010 of the 361° CONFERENCE 2010: DESIGN & INFORMAL CITIES concluded with a movie screening by Amrit Gangar.
Amrit Gangar
Dharavi – Slum for Sale Amrit Gangar is a Mumbai-based independent writer on cinema and art, film historian, curator, documentary filmmaker and producer. He has been working in the field of cinema in various capacities for over three decades. His most recent publications include ‘Sohrab Modi: The Great Mughal of Historicals’, ‘Paul Zils and the Indian Documentary’, ‘Satyajit Ray Ani Tyanche Chitrapat’. Gangar has curated film programs and workshops in France, India, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K. As a production manager and line producer, he has worked on numerous documentaries and feature films in Denmark, India, and Germany, including the 2007 Oscar nominated feature film, ‘After the Wedding’.
A Amrit Gangar expressing his views on Informality.
mrit Gangar screened a film by Lutz Konermann titled ‘Dharavi - Slum for Sale’ (2010, German, 79 min). The film revolves around a Bombay which reinvented itself as Mumbai, a modern, self-confident, commercial metropolis. The film presents the predicaments from the planners’ and the slum dwellers’ side in a chase for their aspirations. The film gave a first-hand insight into the life and ideas of people in one of the world’s largest informal settlements.
informal cities- Depiction of an Indian Informal City in Fiction and Non-Fiction Film. A
mrit Gangar screened a film titled ‘informal cities- DEPICTION OF AN INDIAN INFORMAL CITY IN FICTION AND NON FICTION FILM’. The film is a compilation of various scenes from different movies touching various aspects of life in informal cities around the world. This 64 minute movie collage contained scenes focusing on issues of land mafia, sanitation, working conditions etc. The film alked about the prominance of informality in our visual culture. The film takes us from one clip to another with a connecting thread of extreme conditions and dramatisation. It becomes imperative to observe the issues addressed in these short films to be exaggerations of reality but reality never the less. The film contains flashes of text which not only connect the short segments but also help establish a monologue.