LAAL AASMAAN, HARA GULAAB, NEELI DHARTI

Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.
-Marge Piercy

To live inside a poem, in its continuance.

Fragments of unfinished verses swirl in an orbit, finding their way to each other, bewitched. They dance for a while, hand in hand, and then drop to the ground- to catch a breath, a smile, a moment in time; to sit together. Content. Then they get up to dance again before they say their goodbyes.

Images from the past, present and future, all collide to construct wild imaginations. Colors form, hide and show. Pass through images, like shadows of clouds. Fleeting. They meet each other in dark alleys, and kiss, and melt. Like a flirt with the mysticism of cinema. It’s a film made in the moment, an image at a time. Where bodies constructing the visuals are as much the performance as the images themselves. Cinema expands, perception transforms, colours dissolve – what all can a film be.

With this expanded cinema performance, the intent is to break form, and to just simply, play or dance. To stay in the moment and to transcend with its passing. To arrive in transition. With three 16mm projectors and projectionists as live performers, we enter worlds of visual juxtapositions, photo chemical experiments and engage with the mediums of theatre, mechanics and chemistry.

Performers: Namrata Sanghani, Simran Ankolkar and Karan Suri Talwar
Duration: 45 mins

About Harkat

Harkat Studios is an alternative arts, film and performance space, programming and curating on the fringe in Mumbai. Our key programmes include the annual 16mm Film Festival, regular multi-disciplinary shows and screenings, and an analog film lab with year-long workshops. The lab functions as a collective and an incubator working with the photochemical medium, giving ourselves and other makers the space, tools and knowledge. As a collective of individual makers, the intent is to be aware of one’s cultural foundations in the process of making and seeing. Notions of identity, storytelling, belonging, community, time and space inform a lot of the work Harkat does.