Social Fabric Film Programme

Curated by Shanay Jhaveri

This programme of films responds directly to the most recent history of Mumbai’s once active mill district Girangaon (mill village).

Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar’s documentary Saacha: The Loom, (2001) is built around Sudhir Patwardhan, a painter and the Dalit poet Naryan Surve, both of whom have been involved with left cultural movements in Mumbai. They discuss the decline of the working class, dilemmas of the left and the trade union movement, along with the relevance of art in the contemporary social milieu.

While, Ashim Ahluwalia’s A Short Season (1995), and The Otolith Groups Otolith II (2007), cast the mills and its workers into a broader network of socio-political associations. The former a haiku portrait of an aging old man who is confronted by the violent metamorphosis of a global metropolis, while the latter is a powerful rumination on differing forms of labor.

Seen collectively these works proffer not only a compelling visual document of a now fully transformed neighborhood and community, but also at the same time gesture towards the acute passing of time itself, and ask how with change can lives of dignity be lived?