You Don’t Belong (Documentary) Directed by Spandan Banerjee
India, 2011, 75 minutes, Bengali (with English subtitles), US Premiere
Cast- Arun Chakraborty
Paban Das is a baul singer living in France singing songs of wandering minstrels. Arun Chakraborty is a poet living a quietly content life in a hamlet of West Bengal. Bhoomi is a band from Kolkata, popular for their renditions of folk tunes. Prabuddha Banerjee is a musician with a history of protest music. Paraspathor is an erstwhile band left with memories of their popular songs and lost fame.
Disparate characters who are bound together by a filmmaker’s search for the elusive author of a song, popular in collective memory as a traditional folk song. What follows is a long self-reflexive journey into the world of folk, a journey, which nudges established ideas of home, nostalgia, belonging, and authorship as the film explores deeper into the song that serves for a metaphor of the contemporary fragmented times.
Travelling across remembered lands and forgotten histories following the unseen path of migration that music takes, You Don’t Belong asks some important questions about the encounter between art and mass production, creation and ownership in a country rich with myriad folk and oral traditions.
Spandan Banerjee is an independent filmmaker based in Delhi, India. Under his alternative outfit Overdose Films he directs documentaries, narrative films as well as directs and produces commissioned film projects. His earlier films ‘Beware Dogs’ (Doc/45mins/2007) and ‘The Fiction’ (Fiction/45mins/2008) have premiered and screened at various film festivals across the world. His other interests include designing, photography, cartooning and food. He is currently developing his new music documentary ‘Night Songs’ and scripting two feature film projects.
With: Poshak Directed by Iram Parveen Bilal
Pakistan, 2010, 12 minutes, New York Premiere
Uninspired writer, Dua Tariq, realizes that the search for uninhibited creativity and her true self requires freedom from society's harsh judgments and facades. Her inner soul must be lured out to fulfill her manifestation.
