Zoom Fantastic Wednesday – Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh | Chalo Una (let's march to Una)

Chalo Una is an intimate look at the remains of a protest. In August 2016, one of the largest dalit anti-caste protest rally in recent history was organised. The 10 days rally marched from Ahmedabad to Una (in the western Indian state of Gujarat) in solidarity with four people being flogged in Una. Shot three years to the date of the 2016 rally, the piece is an invitation to the audience to retrace the path that the protest rally took. The shots from the various sites of the protest have been taken in high speed, allowing for entering into a different temporality. This is further enabled by tellings, memories, and recountings of various people involved in the rally, the attempt is to evoke the ghosts of the protest rally. In revisiting these animate and inanimate witnesses, this attempt is for the seemingly small things to embody their true weight. Chalo Una is part of Ujjwal’s practice based phd project 'the revolution is everyday'.

Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh has been trying to develop a form that emerges out of the observational cinema tradition and he continues to do that through his PhD project. He has looked at ideas of nothingness, of being in transit and also of labour practices, specifically at peculiar farming practices. Ujjwal primarily makes films while frequently dabbling into other forms like photography, sound and theater. In his current ongoing work, he is trying to see if and how through this form he can look at and reflect upon the act of protesting and the idea of dissent.

Madhusree Dutta is an Indian Filmmaker, Author and Curator. She is the Artistic Director of the Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World), Cologne/Germany.