Master Class with Nilita Vachani
​Please note venue and time!

30 March 2016, 6 pm
​Indian Institute of Human Settlements
​No. 197/36, 2nd Main Road
Sadashivanagar, Bangalore 560 080
​Phone: 080 6760 6666

In this master class, Nilita will trace her journey as a documentary filmmaker and thinker. Showing excerpts from her films she will explore issues of art, aesthetics and ethics; the representation of the “other” in the filmic image and the social responsibility of the filmmaker; the role of the personal and the political in  documentary filmmaking, and the inevitable influences of censorship and funding. At a creative level, she will explore how camerawork, sound and silence, and the rhythms of editing can transform the spectator from passive viewership into a deep and engaged relationship with the screen.

Nilita Vachani has directed, produced and edited the internationally awarded and highly acclaimed documentary films, Eyes of Stone, Diamonds in a Vegetable Market (Sabzi Mandi ke Heere) and When Mother Comes Home for Christmas. She is also a film teacher and writer. Her debut novel HomeSpun is a work of historical fiction which she started writing the day her second child was born and she took a break from filmmaking. She recently “committed an act of investigative journalism” to tell the Manju Das story about globalization, inequity, domestic work and white collar crime which has amassed world-wide interest and attention.

She is presently working on a documentary on forensic art, the coming togther of art and science in a process where sculpture students reconstruct faces on dead skulls in the hope that victims of homicide may be identified and cold cases solved. 

David Rooney of Variety described Nilita’s documentary style as having the “narrative texture and emotional involvement of a dramatic feature.” This master class will explore the many facets of filmmaking that make that possible.

www.nilitavachani.com

When Mother Comes Home for Christmas
​Screening of a film by Nilita Vachani, followed by a discussion with her

31 March 2016, 7 pm, ​Everest Theatre
Kenchappa Road, Madhavaraya Mudaliar Road, Near To East Ground
​Frazer Town, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560005
Phone: 080 25485765

Synopsis

In today’s globalized economy the first world mother is able to go out and work because of the services of the third world woman who replaces her at home.
Josephine Perera is a migrant worker from Sri Lanka who has spent the last ten years taking care of the homes and families of others. She worked in the Middle East and then moved to Athens, Greece where she takes care of two-year-old Isadora whose mother works in Paris.  Josephine has not seen her own children in ten years.  They share a less fortunate fate in the home country, left to orphanages and the temporary homes of unwilling relatives. Josephine’s youngest son, Suminda was only two when she migrated, the same age that Isadora is now.
The film juxtaposes the tender loving care that Josephine lavishes upon the Greek child with the stark deprivation of Suminda’s life in the orphanage in Hatton, Sri Lanka.
After an absence of ten years, Josephine finally has her much coveted work visa and can travel to her home country to visit her children. She will be home for a brief month during Christmas. The camera follows her on this historic journey documenting the inevitable feelings of loss and longing, expectation and disappointment of a transitory union.
Through Josephine’s story we are witness to the restructuring of societies when women become bread-winners in foreign lands. Ironically it is through their gender functions that they earn their economic freedom but to the detriment of family and culture and with no hope of assimilation in either world. 

Research, Direction, Editing: Nilita Vachani 
Cinematography: Vangelis Kalambakas
Production: Vangelis Kalambakas and Nilita Vachani
Sound: K. Nandhakumar and Costas Poulantzas
Music: Ross Daly
16mm, 109 min. Sinhala, Greek and Tamil  with English subtitles
A FilmSixteen Production for ZDF television, 1995