Screening of film Gaalibeeja (Wind Seed) by Babu Eshwar Prasad
April 5, 2016, 6.30 pm | C.D. Deshmukh Auditorium, India International Centre, 40 Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi 110003
India International Center in collaboration with the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) invites you to the screening of Babu Eshwar Prasad’s Kannada feature film Gaalibeeja (Wind Seed) on April 5, 2016 at 6.30 pm. The screening, at the main auditorium, will be followed by a short discussion with the fimmaker.
Working across media Prasad has been making short videos since 1997 – Gaalibeeja is his debut feature film, entirely self-financed, and is another exciting exploration of the medium of cinema by a contemporary artist. The film was selected for NFDC Film Bazaar Recommendation in the Feature Film Section, Film Bazaar, Goa, 2014 while in rough cut stage. Upon completion it has been shown at 17th Jio MAMI (Mumbai Film Festival) in the India Story Section in 2015 and more recently at the Bengaluru International Film Festival in the Asian Cinema Competition in 2016.
The title of the film is Gaalibeeja, which literally translated into English means ‘Wind Seed’. The road is the central protagonist of the film connecting the various characters. Cinema has been an abiding influence for the filmmaker and the film sets up a conversation with the works of Wim Wenders and Abbas Kiarostami. The film opens with Prakash, a road engineer, leaving for a site visit to an unnamed village. On the way he gives a lift to Jaffer, someone who previously sold pirated dvds, and receives a set of road movies from him. The sequences in the films and the people that Prakash meets begin to resonate with each other. Jaffer’s pronouncement that Prakash’s life could be a film comes back to him as he witnesses each person starring in their own road movie.
The road is a metaphor for life, for the journeys we make, the transitory relationships that are formed in the process. In the current Indian context it is also linked to the rhetoric of progress and development. Today large tracts of land are being sold for real estate and road development, and there is huge upheaval and reordering of resources in the country at a scale which is unprecedented. The film presents a fragmented narrative through images and soundscapes. The road carries us, connects us, it equally disrupts lives. The film explores this ambivalence and the different temporalities people inhabit.
About the filmmaker
Babu Eshwar Prasad completed BFA (Painting) from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, Bangalore and MFA (Graphics) from M.S.University, Baroda and has held exhibitions since 1996 regularly. His most recent solo exhibition Skin of the Earth was held in 2013 at Gallery Sumukha in Bangalore. He has been a recipient of Senior and Junior Fellowship and National Scholarship, HRD Ministry, Government of India, and Karnataka Lalit Kala Akademi award, among others. Apart from painting, Prasad has sustained a deep interest in exploring other media like sculpture, video and photography. His short videos have been screened at various venues. Babu has also participated in and organized various workshops. In 2011 he conceptualized a New Media workshop at the Media Lab, Uttarayan Art Foundation, Vadodara.
Prasad made his first video Notes from my Diary as part of a workshop organised by Max Mueller Bhavan in 1997. Other works that followed like Splice (2003), Dus ka Bees (2005) and Vortex (2008) have been screened at several spaces including Arad Biennele (Romania) and SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Collective), Toronto. His more recent short videos, Looped (3.28 mins), 2012 and Fast Forward to Zero (2:37 mins), 2011, oscillate between still and moving images, and bear witness to industrialisation and its traces on the environment.
Film Details and Cast / Crew
Gaalibeeja
Wind Seed
96 minutes | Kanada film
Scripted and Directed by Babu Eshwar Prasad
Camera Person: B R Viswanath
Editor: M N Swamy
Actors: Venkatesh Prasad, Amaresh Bijjal, Mohammed Rizwan,
Bhanu Prakash Chandra, Divya Murthy