Sreya Chatterjee

What is Bangla kalpavigyan? Is there such a thing as Bangla Science Fiction? Is there such a thing as Indian SF? This is our journey with the genre, captured and presented like never before in film. Beginning with the early work of writers such as Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain (Begum Rokeya) and the speculative mode in Bengal, and ending with the pioneering webzine Kalpabiswa, the film traces the historical arc of kalpavigyan over a century of the genre. From the genre magazines of the 1960s-80s and the writers and editors who ignited the movement by giving it shape and form, the film presents a series of conversations and critical reflections from researchers and scholars who have worked with the genre both in relation to Bengal and kalpavigyan as well as the wider phenomenon of SF.

Hari is a young, aspiring writer living in the countryside. Hari lives with his mother in their sylvan surroundings. His only excitement, perhaps, is the sight of the doctor’s young wife, filling him with hope of an opportunity for flirting. Sometimes, he visits Peter Sir, an old retired school teacher and widower. The two lonely men take pleasure in a curious game, over drinks and exotic dishes. They cut out obituary notices from a local newspaper, put them in a bowl and randomly pick them out, one at a time. They stake small amounts of money against each pick. The person who picks the older victim of death becomes the winner, and pockets the sum. From among the pictures they pick, Peter Sir recognizes two men, Shaji and Kuriakose, whose deaths tell entirely different tales—one of a murder and the other of love.

Cities of Sleep takes us into a heady world of insurgent sleeper’s communities as well as the infamous ‘sleep mafia’ in Delhi where just securing a safe sleeping spot often becomes a question of life and death for a large number of people.The film looks at not only the tremendous social and political pressure that sleep exerts on the homeless in the city but is also a philosophical exploration of sleep at large.

A boat has many powers: to gather a society in its making, to distribute goods, to carry people and ideas across places that, it seems to us, are more different than ever before. From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf is a result of four years of dialogue, friendship and exchange between CAMP and a group of sailors from the Gulf of Kutch. Their travels and those of co-seafarers from Sindh, Baluchistan, and Southern Iran through the gulfs of Persia and Aden show us a world cut into many pieces, not easily bridged by nostalgics or nationalists. Instead, we follow the physical crossings made by these groups of people who make and sail wooden boats and who also make videos, sometimes with songs married to them.