Doc_Commune is back with more opportunities for young filmmakers!
It fosters a process of engagement that helps filmmakers to grow not just their ideas into projects, but also their own understanding of the larger world of documentaries.
Last date for applying: January 20th, 2024.
Description of Project:
The film is an anthology of stories that were important for the director to understand his grandfather’s view about life. It is a chapter wise personal film that portrays the director’s journey of rediscovery, connecting dots from his childhood memories with his grandfather and his influence on him.
Bio Note:
Rahul Ramchandra, a cinematography student at the Film & Television Institute of India, Pune. The honest approach in his work that focuses on stories from his roots which is a tribal dominated district in Maharastra bringing a first hand experience as he himself belongs to tribal community.
Project Description:
Through the experiences of one family, the film explores the questions of intergenerational trauma and grief experienced by the women of Kashmir, and their stories of survival and resistance. It is a story of Kashmir through the eyes of women.
Bio Notes:
Ifreen Raveen is a freelance journalist based in Delhi. She writes fiction and non-fiction with a focus on human rights, conflict, and gender. She is currently working as a researcher for Red Stone Films.
Asma is a multimedia journalist, currently working with BBC India. She is practicing and trained in covering multimedia stories. She also writes fiction as well as non-fiction.
MY GRANDFATHER’S HOUSE
About the Film:
When a loved one dies, the space they inhabited carries their essence. This has made my family react to my late grandfather's house in different ways. My grandmother can hear walls and ceilings talk to her. My father wants to sell it off to escape pain and move on.
Bio Note:
Alvina is an editing graduate from Whistling Woods International, Mumbai. An editor by profession, she has edited feature films, documentary features, several short films and commercials. They have been screened in MAMI, IFFSA Toronto, by the UNHCR and more. This is her first film as a director.
Project Description:
The film explores stories in the architecture and poetry of Kashmir and addresses ideas of home and belongingness.
Bio Notes:
Nundrisha Wakhloo is an independent documentary filmmaker based in New Delhi. Her work captures reminiscence in spaces and people, referring to her own sense of belongingness to her culture.Presently she is the co-director of the New Delhi chapter of Video Consortium. Her diploma film Chaaya is currently featured on MUBI.
Daksh Punj was born and raised in Delhi. He completed his diploma in Creative Documentary from SACAC, Delhi in 2015. Since then, he has been working as a freelancer on feature documentaries, fiction and advocacy films for Discovery, National Geographic, NDTV, Animal Planet and various NGOs. Currently he’s pursuing his MA in film directing from Edinburgh College of Art.
Project Name:
Untitled
Project Description:
In a quaint Kongthong village, the Khasi men and the women share equal responsibilities and power and as result there’s negligible domestic violence in the village. The Khasis are one of the largest surviving matrilineal societies in the world. However, in 1990, a men’s liberation group was formed in Shillong also known as Syngkhong Rympei Thymmai (SRT) to overthrow the matrilineal system as they believe that such a system turns men into drunkards. While SRT fights for patrilineal system, the women still fight to have a place in Dorbar (Village Council) and equal rights.
Bio:
After completing screenwriting course at Film and Television Institute of India, Supriya Prasad Rauniar shot and directed her debut film, Portrait of a Willow single-handedly. The film has been part of official selection at the prestigious Indian Film Festival of Stuttgart, Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, Film SouthAsia 2022, Award Winner at UK fest etc. Her debut feature, The Honeybee Girl was selected for the Journey to Europe: Scriptwriting Development Lab organized by the European Union Film Festival in association with the Dharamshala International Film Festival & Cineuropa.
Project description:
‘Jaaye toh Jaaye Kaha' is a film about the fears and trepidations of low-income group of people living in houses which are on the verge of collapsing in the oldest parts of Mumbai. It deals with the nostalgia and anxieties of navigating the (lack of) choices of adequate housing in the urban.
Bio:
Geetanjali Gurlhosur is an independent social researcher and documentary filmmaker with close to three years of work experience as a multimedia journalist and research consultant. Her short documentary 'Jarjar Ghar' (2020) won best documentary award at Pune Short Film Festival and was screened at SIGNS Festival, Kerala in 2021.
Logline:
When insurgency forced people to flee Chalbadi, ageing activists Govindarao & Marubai refused to leave. 22 years later, alone and abandoned, they confront the costs they and their people paid for their activism & own mortality. They desperately want people to return. If people don’t, Chalbadi will cease to exist.
Bio Note:
Sakshi Gulati is a graduate in Film Direction from Film & Television Institute of India (FTII). She has also studied Mass communication and has worked on non-fiction films, Media literacy initiatives & has documented folk cultures. Her short films have been screened at various national & International platforms. Chalbadi is her first feature length documentary.
Ragini Nath is a documentary filmmaker and photographer. She has training in documentary filmmaking from The New School, New York. She has previously worked at the intersection of journalism, film, and social change. Her first independent documentary production Bar and Girl, 2018 has premiered at national and international film festivals. She has also had experience working on projects for the History Channel, Netflix, and Bollywood. Her photography work has been exhibited in the Kuala Lumpur Photography Festival, Angkor Photo Festival, and India Photo Festival. Our Hoolocks is her first feature-length documentary.
Chinmoy Sonowal is a documentary filmmaker and a landscape photographer. He has studied creative documentary filmmaking at Sri Aurobindo Center for Arts and Communication, New Delhi. His first film Bound By Us, 2019 looked at the impacts of human intervention on a forest bounded by the city of New Delhi. Bound by Us has been part of several domestic festivals including Dharamshala International Film Festival and Kolkata International Film Festival. He has a keen interest in working for films that revolve around conservation, natural history, and resource politics. Our Hoolocks is also his first feature-length documentary.
Bio:
Mallika Visvanathan is an independent filmmaker and researcher based in Delhi. With a Masters in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a Diploma in Creative Documentary Filmmaking from Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication, her work attempts to explore the intersection of research and practice.
Description:
Love, Time, Memory seeks to recollect experiences from the filmmaker’s life as she reflects on loss, illness and solitude.
Pankaj Johar is a director and producer, known for Cecilia (2015), Making India Accessible (2019) and Satyarthi (2019). He worked as a television producer with India’s leading broadcasters for a decade before founding his own production company. His work has been supported by IDFA Bertha Fund, Sundance Institute, Norwegian Film Institute, BRITDOC, BBC and ZDF Arte, among others. His film Shuttlecock Boys featured in almost all the top Indian critics’ year-end lists of 2012. Pankaj has worked as consultant on Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan’s popular show Satyameva Jayate.
A graduate of FTII, Pune, Sanjiv Shah has been a filmmaker for the past 4 decades working on a range of fiction and non-fictions films that explore the cinematic medium to effectively communicate and engage with issues that are socially, culturally and politically relevant. He has worked on prestigious films such as Mirch Masala (1987) and has produced, edited and directed several documentaries on issues like housing rights, drought in the grasslands of Kutch, struggles of organized landless labourers across India, and ecosystems of the desert of Rajasthan and the Himalayas. Sanjiv Shah’s Hun Hunshi Hunshilal (1992) is a film in Gujarati that was made around the time of India’s liberalisation. The film looks at the contemporary history of the era, which saw the rise of globalisation as well as fundamentalism and growing intolerance towards alternative voices and dissent.
Avijit Mukul Kishore is a filmmaker and cinematographer based in Mumbai, India. His areas of interest and specialization have been the documentary film and collaborations with visual artists on video and film based installation. He is also actively involved in art, cinema and cultural pedagogy with several institutions. He has directed Vertical City, Certified Universal and Snapshots From a Family Album.
Hansa Thapliyal is a filmmaker and writer who has worked across fiction and non-fiction forms. She has worked previously on digital archiving and collaborated on a creative project on early Indian cinema. Lately, her work has begun integrating stop motion and animation, in an attempt to make the screen feel more material. Hansa is also a teacher and workshop facilitator.
Iffat Fatima is an independent documentary filmmaker, researcher and audio-visual designer from Kashmir. For many years now through her documentary work she has been exploring the overlaps between memory, history and violence. Her documentary film Khoon Diy Baarav (Blood Leaves its Trail) 2015, explores issues of violence and memory in Kashmir and Lanka- the other side of war and peace is a journey through the history of overlapping conflicts in Sri Lanka. Her films include, Where Have You Hidden My New Crescent Moon, The Kesar Saga, In the Realm of the Visual, Boojh Sakey to Boojh. Her installation work Ethnography of a European city: Conversations in Salzburg, questions some of the assumptions in the east vs. west polarity/ dichotomy /disparity.
Ruchika Negi is a filmmaker and educator, with an interest in critical and creative pedagogical practices. Her films include Every Time You Tell A Story, Malegaon Times and ML 05 6055. She has been awarded artistic residencies at Khoj (New Delhi), Parco Arte Vivente Experimental Centre for Contemporary Art (Turin) and Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski (Warsaw), and is the recipient of Charles Wallace India Trust- Short Term Fellowship (2016). Ruchika was core faculty at the Creative Documentary Course (Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communication, New Delhi) from 2015-19, and occasionally teaches film at the Ashoka University, Sonipat. Currently, she is Associate Editor at The Third Eye, a feminist learning platform supported by Nirantar Trust.
R V.Ramani, born in Mumbai, 1957, graduated in Physics from Mumbai University. He worked as a photojournalist in Mumbai and later graduated from the Film and TV Institute of India, Pune, in 1985, with specialization in Motion Picture Photography. Today he is one of the leading documentary filmmakers in India, who has established a unique style of his own, making independent impressionistic documentaries, which has found recognition both in India and abroad. He has traveled widely with his films and his films and Retrospectives have been presented in many International Film Festivals. He regularly conducts filmmaking workshops at many Institutions. Presently he lives in Chennai, working on many feature documentaries.
Iram Ghufran is a Delhi based filmmaker and artist working on moving image, sound and text. She is an award winning filmmaker whose work has been shown in several international art and cinematic contexts, including Berlin, Experimenta India, SAARC Film Festival and ISEA, among others. Iram is currently pursuing a practice based PhD at the University of Westminster, London.
Haobam Paban Kumar is an Indian filmmaker from the state of Manipur. His debut feature film Loktak Lairembee (Lady of the Lake) won the National Film Award for Best Film on Environment Conservation/Preservation at the 64th National Film Awards 2017. He also won the German Star of India at the 14th Indian Film Festival in Stuttgart, Germany for the film in 2017. His other films include The First Leap (2008), Mr India (2009) and Ruptured Spring (2012) and Phum Shang (2014). He was the head of jury for non-feature films in the Indian Panorama section (51st International Film Festival of India).
Agrima is an independent Short-Film Director, a trained Cinematographer and a Mixed Media Visual Artist from Karnal, Haryana. She has done her Masters of English Literature from Miranda House, Delhi University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Film and Digital Cinematography from Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata. Having fashioned her sensibilities through a diverse range of media, her approach to filmmaking is utterly interdisciplinary. Her formal preoccupations with language, literature and cinema, her spiritual connections to what is considered ‘trash’ for most archives and her phenomeno-political understanding of the world are important to her filmmaking.
Ankita started her film career a decade ago, and has worked as a creative consultant, writer and associate director on critically acclaimed documentary features for channels like Discovery, National Geographic and History TV18, as well as branded content for clients such as Amul, Singapore Tourism, UNICEF, Panasonic, amongst others. Drawing from her own personal experience and real human stories, her current project is a docu-drama that aims to investigate the surprising ways in which our mental health is connected to our physical well-being, and initiate dialogue around our inner lives, thought patterns and beliefs, that ultimately shape our human experience.
Anuj Bhatt is a Media and Cultural Studies graduate from TISS Mumbai and has a deep interest in storytelling through films. A H Wheeler and Co, a Railway Bookstore after a successful run of 140 years was converted into a multipurpose goods store. His project seeks to document this major cultural change through stories from consumers, stall operators and owners.
I am an independent filmmaker-artist from Assam, India. I am interested in non-narrative and hybrid art that deals with the distinctions and overlaps of experience, reality, and truth. I am currently working on a hybrid documentary about two siblings, their deserted, decrepit ancestral home, and numerous such uninhabited homes in Barak Valley, Assam.
Bhagat Singh Saini is a self-taught filmmaker based in New Delhi, India. As a writer-director, he has created content that ranges from advertisements, short films and documentaries to staging plays. He is an alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi from where he obtained his doctorate in media studies specialising in “Stage, Performance and Senses: A Study of New Media Practices in Contemporary Indian Theatre”. He also served as a Guest Faculty at Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, New Delhi where he taught 'World Theatre’ & ‘Narrative Techniques’. On the Run is based in a remote village of Haryana, where a group of boys prepare everyday for the “sixteen hundred meters race” to join the defense forces putting everything at stake, against the backdrop of high unemployment, less chances of success and peer pressure like they have never seen.
Deepshikha Poddar, a M.A. in English Literature, completed her Post Graduate Diploma in Film Direction from Roopkala Kendro, Kolkata. Her first independent documentary film was produced by Documentary Resource Initiative in Collaboration with Yes Bank Foundation. It was screened at the 3rdSouth Asian Short Film Festival, Cefalu Film Festival in Italy and Short Film Factory in Romania. Her current film ‘Michael and Me’ is an overwhelming love hate story of a creator and his creation,in the backdrop of continuously modernizing city Kolkata.
Divya Kharnare is a young graduate in mass communication who was working with a Youtube channel BhaDiPa & Bha2Pa for a few years. He moved on to working on a few independent documentaries - '15 Seconds A Lifetime','Mahalle's School - Family Going Live' & 'Letters to My Grandma' in various creative spaces. His project for PSBT Doc Commune revolves around the crazy and chaotic world of Indian Papparazis.
Gaurav is from Rohtak (Haryana) He is 24 years old and pursuing specialisation in cinematography from a film school. I’ve traveled 95,000 kilometres across india on my bike. My project is about a girl who left a cushioned job in corporate and start living in the Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh. She experiences a sense of liberation there after having passed through troubled times before.
Harsh Hudda is a film director based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He has worked on feature films and docu-fictions and runs a small production studio in Ahmedabad. His inspiration to create comes from the experiences of everyday life, as he finds beauty in the structure and simplicity of the ordinary. His work explores the art-experience through image and sound.
Hou-hsein is a Filmmaker, Editor, and Visual designer based in Mumbai. They are a Postgraduate in Media and Culture Studies from TISS, Mumbai. They are the Director of two documentary films (4’33’’ and Thalapathy 65 ½). Her new work focuses on Video Parlors in Mumbai as a site for the cultural possession of the working class over cinema.
I am a filmmaker from Tripura, India. Stories related to human behaviour and society has always been interesting to me. Earlier I was part of a short film which was selected and screened in KIFF. Although I was not interested in non-fiction from the beginning but some ideas caught my attention and they could be told better through non-fiction only. My project is on 'Jaduni' a form of throat singing practiced among tribal communities of Tripura. Jaduni singers are at the brink of extinction and this is a passion project to bring focus on the mesmerizing experience of listening Jaduni.
Kaatyaayani Pandey is a Delhi-based filmmaker and a graduate of AJK MCRC. With an interest in South-Asian history, she hopes to use her work to uncover hidden stories and lesser-known traditions from the subcontinent. By following local myths and folklore, her current project explores the mystical and syncretic relationship that humans share with water in the region of Ellora-Khuldabad-Daulatabad.
Kabir Naik is a documentary filmmaker and multimedia artist based out of Delhi, India. His work revolves around interrogating the complexities of social injustice, rural issues, and the commodification of culture. With his project, he aims to document the Life of a Thampa and his Role in the Journey of Life and Death for the Monpa Community of Arunachal Pradesh.
Kallol Mukherjee is a filmmaker from Jabalpur based in Mumbai. His interest lies in the experimentation of non-fiction narratives with fictional elements. His project ``Badda Ki Maalgudi`` intends to capture the journey of a financially unstable Bundelkhandi rapper FPC ANK's struggles and 'jugaads' of keeping his language alive by launching his first rap album independently.
Kavita Yadav is a Creative Producer, Director and Writer based out of Bengaluru, India. Over the past years she has had the opportunity to work on various storytelling formats from Documentaries, Non-Fiction Shows, Advertisements to Corporate Videos.Though her heart lies in telling real impactful stories from her neighbourhood.Her last project Decoding Disasters, a 4 part series for Discovery India was announced National Winner at Asian Academy Awards 2022 in Short Format - non fiction category.
Born in Jaipur, Rajasthan and computer science graduate, Keshav Madhav is a full time cinematographer finding subtle expressions of life through his lens.
Ketki Yewale is a Cinematographer based in Navi Mumbai who aims to create visuals that deeply resonate with the viewers. She has extensive experience in shooting short films, advertisements and corporate films. Currently, she's working on a documentary revolving around a heartwarming friendship of a housewife with her two maids, showcasing the nuances of their relationship as well as navigating through some deeper complexities.
Kirti is currently based in Shillong, Meghalaya. Kirti finds herself at the intersection of art, nature and culture. She is inclined to works where there is commitment to Research and Documentation of ancient Knowledge system. Camera as a tool of inquiry helps her to critically examine the world, to experience it in more depth and beauty.
Lokesh is a film student at the Film and Television Institute of India, currently in the second year of the course. He attended IIT Kharagpur for his bachelors, then worked at a tech startup in Bengaluru, before taking a plunge into filmmaking and joining a film school. He is a native of a small village called Ramli in Betul district in Madhya Pradesh. His project is about the dichotomy in the struggles and aspirations of India's youth, explored from the perspectives from his friends from village and his friends who work plum jobs at top multinationals.
Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap is a practicing filmmaker from Assam and a final year student of SRFTI. Proposed FIlm Logline - Five sisters from a flood affected interior village in Assam accidently end up in the national boating team of India together but now struggle to row for the country fighting tides of societal and family pressures.
I am a Fine-artist. Practicing storytelling for the last 12 years in Theater, Painting, and Film. Through this documentary, I'll be tapping into some personal, political, and existential questions about Banjara Community to which I biologically belong but I feel alienated inside the community.
Mohd Fehmeed is a film graduate from AJK - MCRC Jamia Millia Islamia, Theatre Worker, and New Media Enthusiast capturing stories from rural India about dreams, aspirations, and hurdles. His latest project delves into the world of Indian street magicians, capturing their art and exploring the joys and challenges of their lives.
Mythri Babu is a visual artist currently based in Goa. Her medium of work includes photography, video, animation and illustration. Mythri considers herself as a storyteller and she is interested in memory, history and other remains from the past. She loves illustrating women.
Nawas Ali is a filmmaker with a physics background, from Kerala, who holds a Master's degree in Film Editing from the Film and Television Institute of India. His untitled project is a vignette, much like a reverie, that poetically explores the teeming connections between Kolkali, Kalaripayattu, and Mappilapaattu.
Nayla Khwaja is a visionary filmmaker, journalist, and advocate for women's rights and minority communities. With a strong commitment to intersectionality, her work challenges stereotypes and amplifies marginalized voices. Through ``Unveiling Autonomy,`` Nayla aims to inspire change and promote understanding through powerful storytelling and visual expression. She is currently working on the idea of ``unveiling autonomy`` to shed light on the struggle of muslim women over their choices of appearances and lifestyles.
Palok is a film maker-director from Firozabad, Uttar Pradesh, now based in Delhi. With over a decade of experience, across advertising, corporate and documentary film making, he had worked for some of the leading brands, organisations and governments like Amway, Discovery India, Dabur, Maruti Suzuki, Ministry of Education (GOI) and more. He is currently exploring subjects for his Documentary project while parallely honing his skills and understanding with Doc_Commune.
Pritam Patowary is a filmmaker from Tangla, Assam, who is currently pursuing his Masters in Film Studies from Jadavpur University. His project ``Nocturnal`` is a documentary based on the lives of the 'night chowkidars' employed in the residential colonies of Kolkata. Co-founder of an independent filmmaking group named 'Bioscopic Arena', he is part of Sundance Writer's Cafe and has also been invited for a virtual interview at Raindance Film School, London.
Priya Naresh is a filmmaker based in New Delhi. She has made two short fiction films and two non-fiction films. Her curiosity lies in exploring the space between fiction and non-fiction film practice. Her current project is an essay film on the city of Ahmedabad and her relationship with the city.
Raashid Andrabi is a journalism graduate and full-time journalist based in Bandipora, Kashmir. His project is a documentary titled ``The Last Sanctuary,`` which tells the story of the Burusho people, a small community in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, who have managed to preserve their language and cultural heritage for over a century despite facing political and economic challenges.
Sagar Saurabh is a lyricist, actor and filmmaker from Assam and is currently based in Mumbai. He co-wrote and played a primary character in the feature film ‘Aamis’ (Ravening) which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival. His short film 'An Afternoon With A Stranger' (2022) has been selected for the SiGNS and Cinergo International Film Festival 2023. His feature-length project 'A Pistol' was in the Writers INK Feature Film Screenwriting Lab 2022. His current project is about a lonely lady who devotes herself to the conservation of a rare species of bird.
Shruti Parthasarathy is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, sustainability practitioner and kindness evangelist. She is an alumni of Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute. She believes that everything one does is a reflection of the people, place and time one lives in. Through this project she delves into the bias of 'gendered expectations' and it's ramifications on the contemporary male identity.
Soham is an Indian born, London based Writer-Director, an alumna of University of the Arts London (Directing), a recipient of the JN Tata Scholarship. Love Death and Everything In Between won the ‘Prix Interculturel Award’ at Film School Fest Munich. AALO premiered at Mumbai IFF. Soham aims to normalise South Asian identity in film, with a focus on familial relations, marginalised identities and peculiar human connections. He is in early stages of development for his first feature 'The Sea Urchin' with Pop Up Film Residency. A Sunny Day in Cacluuta follows a young woman in her 20’s, as she grapples with her ambition to become an actor, desire to find genuine connection, expectations from her motherhood, in the span of one sunny day in Calcutta.
After graduating in Business studies, Suraj shifted to a career in the development sector. Based out of Mumbai, he is committed to telling stories that advocate solutions for socio-developmental issues and his work has been featured in publications like BBC, The Wire and Deutsche Welle.
Swanand Kottewar is a filmmaker, who has studied mass media from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. His interests lies in exploring of image, space, narrative, and the possibilities offered by cinematic expressions. His film is about the unfolding in the lives of a newly married couple, who have a genetic blood disorder called Thalassemia.
Purnima is a Storyteller from Bokaro, Jharkhand. She has worked on various non-fiction films and a docu-series as Video Producer. With a deep interest in understanding the indigenous culture and beliefs, she wishes to explore and document the ancient folklores.
Shadab Farooq is a filmmaker and a performance artist. His Project is based on a unique village in Jammu and Kashmir which is known to be the world's only deaf and mute village.
Shikher Pal, is an independent filmmaker, who recently passed out of FTII, Pune with Cinematography specialization. Interested in discovering newer ways of self-expression through the lens, his project ``No Road to my Home`` explores the aftermath of a traumatic experience of debt trap on a young tribal family from the remote interiors of rural Maharashtra
