Auroville short films to become a repository of Ladakhi life and culture

Auroville Film Institute launches Ladakh Audiovisual Media Archive project, showcasing Ladakhi culture through documentary filmmaking.

The Auroville Film Institute (AVFI), in partnership with the University of Ladakh, has launched the Ladakh Audiovisual Media Archive (LAMA) project that will serve as a dynamic repository of footage and other unique audio-visual markers of the history and culture of Ladakh and the Ladakhi life. The project is produced as part of the experiential filmmaking modules.

LAMA was formally launched at the conclusion of the collaborative, multi-site Open Space Documentary Arts (OSDA) programme in Ladakh. The programme evolved from a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the AVFI (a unit of Auroville Foundation) and the University, in 2023.

The curriculum, delivered in Auroville and Ladakh, includes orientation of cinematic arts with special focus on documentary arts practices, experimenting with narrative tools, techniques of cinematic articulation, and learning to translate real sites into cinematic spaces. It also has modules on editing (intensive course work), diploma project productions, exhibitions, and public screenings.

A group of 31 aspiring filmmakers from different parts of the country and abroad participated in the one-year PG Diploma programme and the short-term (55 day) hands-on documentary filmmaking workshop of the Ladakh chapter of the OSDA programme.

The aspiring filmmakers, with diverse cultural and professional backgrounds, hailed from eight countries. The youngest of them was 17 years old and the oldest was 69.

The call for the workshop had emphasised on how artistes and mediators grappling with an increasingly warring world riven by polarising views and oppositional principles reassess their worldviews, and was vindicated by the student film package that boldly tackled the Israel-Palestine conflict and the unrest in Bangladesh, said Richa Hushing, an AVFI Director and curriculum designer. “I am extremely proud to present these films under the AVFI banner that are a plea for world peace and human unity,” she said.

S.K. Mehta, Vice-Chancellor, University of Ladakh, said the plethora of films, footage, and audio-visual resources generated by students engaged with AVFI’s programmes in Ladakh contains unique markers of time, space, and subjects across the region that are significant in terms of their historical, anthropological, and documentary value. “This archive will be of immense academic value for the purposes of research, documentation, and creative/scholarly interpretations,” he noted.