John Abraham
John Abraham (1937 – 1987, Kuttanad) was a Malayali Indian filmmaker, short story writer and screenwriter ranked among the greatest Indian film directors. After originally graduating with a degree in History and Politics and working as a teacher, Abraham went on to study at the Film and Television Institute of India. He is well remembered for his efforts in starting a people’s cinema movement, an absolute form of independent filmmaking called Odessa Collective. Abraham is known for his nomadic style of living, he rebelled against all the established ways of life as well as filmmaking. He was also a great writer of short stories. In one of of his surrealist tales, How Many Mathais in Kottayam, a man named Mathai sets out to discover how many other Mathais are there in his town.
This screening will be accompanied with an in person conversation with Camara Taylor (suspiration!) and will take place at The Maltings in Berwick-upon-Tweed.
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Hailstorm is based in the Narmada valley in central India, an area with extremely low levels of groundwater. Farmers here battle for survival, pitched against the vagaries of climate change. Following the events of a freak hailstorm over four seasons, the film unfolds the vulnerability and precarity of those that are at the sharpest end of global capitalism’s rapacious greed and the furthest from its benefits. —Jemma Desai
This collection of short form work by the Cambodian filmmakers associated with the production company Anti-Archive shows the breadth and quality of their filmmaking.
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Rock Bottom Riser is an immersive, exploratory and deeply inquisitive study of an island world at sea. The film fashions a layered and heterogeneous portrait of Hawaii through its cosmogony, its uncertain future and the scattered lens of the present. Through a combination of research, observation of the islands’ landscape and conversation with many different people who call it home, artist-filmmaker Fern Silva highlights the complexity and contradictions of a place which can be understood as beautiful and serene but also under constant existential threat.