Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel
87 min, colour, 2012 / English
June 19, 2015 | Registration and Tea: 7.00 pm | Film Screening: 7.30 pm
The Hive, 50-A, Huma Mansion, Next To Ahmed Bakery, Chuim Village Road, Off Union Park, Khar West, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400052
Limited Seating | RSVP nikhil@mohileparikhcenter.org
Outreach Partner: The Hive
Geographies of Consumption | Bombay/Mumbai, is a public art project conceived and curated by the Mohile Parikh Center. It critically investigates the impact of consumption on natural resources in the city, and on human bodies, our ecosystems and cultures. Interspersed in the project are study groups, film screenings, public lectures, an annual symposia, and publication.
The third edition of the film program is at The Hive, a community space located in Chuim, a fishing village in Khar. The film Leviathan (2012) takes us to another fishing
community in New Bedford (New England), that formed the background for Herman Melville’s literary classic ‘Moby Dick’, a story about a man and his obsession with a whale.
‘Leviathan’ is set on a fishing trawler in that context. Using many miniature GoPro Cameras attached to almost every conceivable part of the ship, the film creates an unreal universe and makes us identify with not only the human, but also every animate and inanimate part of that experience. Edited together into a non-linear and almost wordless whole, we are plunged into a dark hallucinatory world where the sea rages, the wind blows, half-dead fish lie on the ship’s floor, and seagulls fly overhead for the dead fish on the deck. Boldly experimental and challenging, the film is a kinetic, spectacular work that bridges the gap between academic research and aesthetic experience.
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel from the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University attempt to create a new way of understanding people and culture through an interdisciplinary methods that combines the arts, the natural and social sciences, and the humanities.
The film program is designed to engage with different spaces in the city over the course of the year. Curated by Avijit Mukul Kishore and Rohan Shivkumar, the selected films will respond to these spaces in an attempt to interpret multiple imaginations of geography and consumption.
Avijit Mukul Kishore is a film-maker and cinematographer based in Mumbai. He works in many genres of film and video making, and is actively involved in art, cinema and cultural pedagogy. He is co-curator at the FD Zone programme of Films Division India since its inception in 2012.
Rohan Shivkumar is an architect and urban designer from Mumbai and is the Deputy Director of the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies. He is interested in exploring cross disciplinary ways of reading and representation of cities.
