Slow Shift

Spanning the window between dawn and dusk in a seamless feeling of scorching heat, Shambhavi Kaul imprints an ancient site of granite chaos and roaming langurs in saturated celluloid. Departing from the nostalgic found footage present in her previous work, Slow Shift is composed purely of Kaul’s own cinematography, combining observation with animism. She continues to explore more-than-human narrative agencies in this depiction of the one-time capital of an ancient Hindu kingdom, here dislocated in time and place from its usually large number of tourists. Her exploration extends sonically, with a bendable and stretchable soundscape that magnifies this world of playful rhythmic tension and supernatural presence at the edge of a rock avalanche. (Ane Lopez)

Shambhavi Kaul (b. 1973 in Jodhpur) is a filmmaker and editor living and working between India and the USA, where she teaches at Duke University.. Her works explore the cinematic construction of place and identity, conjuring uncanny, science-fictive non-places. She has exhibited her work worldwide including at Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale, New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, London Film Festival, and Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen. She has presented two solo shows at Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, as well as exhibited her films at the MOMA in New York and Tate London.

Slow Shift (2023), Hijacked (2017), Safe Travels (2017) [moving image installation], Modes of Faltering (2016) [moving image installation], Fallen Objects (2015) [moving image installation], Night Noon (2014), Mount Song (2013), Loops and Captions (2013) [moving image installation], 21 Chitrakoot (2012), Place for Landing (2010), Scene 32 (2009)