Film and Television Institute of India

Once upon a time in a village, an old lady steals the rooster and the sun never rises again.

An act of violence resonates through the night, touching upon the lives of different characters, who otherwise would not necessarily exist in each other’s daily narrative. The story is seen through the self contained world of seven characters as they drift along the otherwise mundane night meandering around the graphical symmetry of a ‘modern’ city. The story is based on excerpts taken from a novel by Haruki Murakami by the same name

Glimpses of lives from a village in Assam reveal the relationship between its history and the present. People’s lives and beliefs are entangled with ecological strings , as nature stands witness to the narratives that unfolded there. A young boy, Rahul, hopes to write a book on his experience of growing up in this village. His mother, being deeply connected with nature can sense messages and signs arising from nature.. Urmila, a pregnant lady, is driven by sensorial experiences. But, In contrast to the serenity and harmonious living; there lurks a violent societal past.These peaceful and quiet lives intersect in a space where traumatic memories of death and loss in Assam’s thirty years of secessionist movement keep resurfacing.

Three young men are putting up an antenna for their amateur radiostation in a city tower block. They want to connect to the ISS space station, which orbits the globe, which they succeed in doing. In return the astronauts report on the weather to their entire audience. In the meantime, the young man who holds the antenna eavesdrops on several people talking about all sorts of things.

Through faces and bodies of real life labourers emerges an epistolary account of a daily wage owner who suddenly finds himself out of work one day. As rampant industrialisation surges, a new class is born - a crowd of nomadic migrant workers whose lives are a series of transitions in search of work. Folk tale and memory as witnesses to this rapidly changing world through their eyes.

Kaki is a 60-year-old widow who lives with her Nepali maid, Malti. The film takes place on one afternoon in their house where a flower blossoms in the balcony. Malti meets a boy (a sailor) from her hometown unexpectedly.

Jivari, in Indian Classical Music, refers to the overtone-rich sound characteristic of classical Indian string instruments such as Tanpura, Sitar, Surbahar, Rudra Veena and Saraswati Veena. Jivari can refer to the acoustic phenomenon itself and to the meticulously carved bone, ivory or wooden bridges that supports the strings on the sounding-board that produce this particular effect. The film attempts to trace the bridge between the craftsman and the musician by exploring the intimate bond Zakir Bhai and music shop hse with classical music, and how this bond has evolved over the years, interspersed with letters

"Afterglow" is a tragi-comic piece about a Parsi widow who has just lost her husband and the condolence visitors who come in to offer their mock sympathy.

People are involved in daily encounters without ever being aware of how they are connected with one another. A taxi reveals all.

Madhav, a playful 8-year-old boy who has spent most of his time playing outdoors in the village, is being sent to town for educational purposes.

A man from Assam working in Maharashtra encounters the foreign city when he is asked to get a fake ID card made to continue his job.

FTII Diploma film for acting students of 1964-65 by Ritwik Ghatak

FTII Diploma film by Mani Kaul

Three siblings, brother Dinu and two sisters Anu and Buri meet on a seashore one morning after their mother's death. They reminiscence about their mother and her relentless journey in search of 'home'. Gradually as they dwell through their personal memories of 'mother' they unknowingly enter into unknown dark zones of mother and their own lives. The spirits of their ancestors too become part of their stories as the two sisters preform their memories. Dreams, fantasies, memories and reality starts to overlap to form a complex image of 'mother' in search of home.

The story deals with a professional hitman, who falls in love with the woman he sets out to murder.

Due to the caste dynamics and hierachy prevailing in Golegaon as in the rest of the country, the Adivasi people in the village struggle to hold onto their traditions and assert their own individual identity as a community in the very place that has belonged to them for generations.

Shama and Ravi are members of a Marxist party. Shama loves classical Indian music, a luxury of a few, and Ravi is in love with quotations and the philosophy of Marx - a need of the masses. Due to a strike, Ravi is compelled to work full-time for the party. Shama decides to give up music reluctantly and joins Ravi.

Sea of Lost Time is an allegory set in an undefined time and space, evoking the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, inspired by his characters. A soldier comes back from the dead to a seaside village. He reminisces on the time lost while he was away, like a sea between his past and the dysfunctional present. Through him we discover a motley of characters: a rag-tag musical band, a man locked up inside an abandoned horse stable, his sister, also the soldier’s lover and who has been bemoaning the loss. An impressionistic view of the intertwined lives of those inhabiting imaginary spaces, with an underpinning of social and political metaphors.

A personal exploration of one's lost identity, reflecting upon the oral literature passed through generations within the Gor-Banjara tribe