Commemorating a Revolution yet to come.

A small town, Mahad, holds a very special iconic place in the imaginary of the Dalit Anti-Caste movement in India. This is the town where the towering anti-caste leader Dr. Ambedkar took out his first protest rally in 1927. Almost a century later despite the strides made by the Anti-Caste movement, caste based discrimination and oppression continue to be prevalent in contemporary India. 

Through this project – which will center around the creation of a multi-channel cinematic work – we want to revisit and be with Mahad’s revolutionary radical moment and the Anti-Caste movement. Going beyond the binarity of celebration or rejection, it is rather being with it in all its complexity, its flaws, its achievements, its critiques. Without reducing it simply to an understandable, explainable linear narrative, is it possible to find a cinematic form which truly commemorates this revolution, a revolution yet to be? What does it really mean to pay respect to, to honour, an unfinished revolution? We want to challenge cinema from beyond the representational, from the traps of the aural-visual layers; to visibilise the invisible, auralise the inaudible. Will such a commemoration bring us closer to the ideal of a casteless society?