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Rati Chakravyuh
A film by Ashish Avikunthak
October 22 – November 1, 2014
Press Preview & Private Screening: Wednesday, October 22, 7:00pm
Featuring an Artist’s Discussion and Q&A
New York, 35 Great Jones Street |
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| Aicon Gallery is pleased to present Rati Chakravyuh,
a new feature-length film by Ashish Avikunthak. The
film, comprised of a single 105-minute shot, centers
around the continuous conversation of six young
newlywed couples and a priestess after a mass
wedding. Made entirely in Bengali, Rati Chakravuyh
develops a complex and intense narrative through its
meditation on an unbroken ever-evolving
conversation about the whole of the human
condition, questioning beliefs about life, death, love,
sex, violence, religion, war, mythology, history and
modernity. Rati Chakravyuh’s screening at Aicon
Gallery, New York represents the international
premier of Avikunthak’s mesmerizing new film,
following acclaimed debuts in Kolkata and Mumbai. |
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Director’s note:
The film is the experience of the inescapable maze created through the dizzying effect of the camera that moves in
spirals throughout. In that dizzying spiral, words vanish, faces blur into a stream of light and eyes crave for the
darkness of ignorance, of innocent illusions, of dreams where redemption is really possible. The stories are nonexistent,
they are the same, yet very different; but we must transcend them. How do we do that? Temporality is a
painful truth to reckon with. It stretches out in a painstaking fashion, trapping every attempt to radiate out of the
circle. It is our pain on that screen and we cannot look away, we cannot wish it away or magically transform it into a
dreamscape. There is simply no space for any space. Space collapses into that speck, but floats endlessly unlike that
moment which is out of time. The circular motion of the camera creates that spiral maze and makes us aware of the
harsh truth – that we must fight a losing battle, only to inevitably lose, die and disappear. The film thwarts all our
attempts to hide, to run, and all we can really do is to watch those faces blur in the spiral motions, watch those words
become a hazy long stretch of intimately familiar sound, watch everything turn into myself - the emptiness that gave
birth to the words. The inspiration for this film came from Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’. The idea of the final
communion among loved ones before an imminent finale was a dramatic conduit for a philosophical exploration of
contemporary Indian life.
This is a single shot film. It is bookended with two title cards – the first appearing at the beginning of the film
mentions the mass wedding, and another ends the film announcing the mass suicide. In the middle is the single shot of
98 minutes of the conversation among the thirteen individuals. They all sit in a circle in the middle of a brightly lit
ancient temple. |
 They talk about their lives and their times in postcolonial India –
violence, love, death, sex, cricket, suicide, life of Gods and Goddesses,
religion, political murders, non-violence, cars, and riots. The film is
an allegory of being Indian, being human, being alive. It is the last
meeting before an impending tragedy to open up the world of living,
that will eventually court death. It is a dramatic dialogue of death
before suicide.
The camera is on a circular dolly and goes in circles throughout the
shot. The continuous single shot is employed to heighten the
temporal nature of the film. The circular motion of the camera
creates a spiral universe in which the voices float and create a
continuous image/ soundscape that encompasses the film. The slow
spinning of the camera movement in a single shot produces a dizzy
vortex - a cinematic whirlpool into which the image, the sound, the
actors and the whole film is sucked.
Theatrically it employs a typical form of community gathering in
Calcutta - the ‘adda’ – a freestyle intellectual exchange among a
group of people – students, poets, activists, and artists – very
common in the public life of the city. In this film, the group consists
of newly wed young men and women who have come together after
their communal wedding to talk about life, death and everything in
between before they give their life. They commit mass suicide. |
Trailers for the film may be viewed at the following links:
http://vimeo.com/97888465
http://vimeo.com/97719308
http://vimeo.com/98841932 |
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| Ashish Avikunthak is an experimental filmmaker who has been making films in India since the mid nineties. His films
have been shown worldwide in film festivals, galleries and museums. Notable screenings were at the Tate Modern,
London, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, along with London, Locarno, Rotterdam, and
Berlin film festivals among other locations. He has had retrospective of his works at Les Inattendus, Lyon (2006), Yale
University (2008) and the National Centre for Performing Arts, Mumbai (2008), Festival International Signes de Nuit,
Paris (2012), Rice University (2014). He has a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and has taught
at Yale University. He is now an Assistant Professor of Film Media at the Harrington School of Communication &
Media, University of Rhode Island. Avikunthak was included as a "Future Greats" artist in 2014 by Art Review
magazine. |
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| Please contact Aicon Gallery (Andrew@Aicongallery.com) for more information. |
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| 35 Great Joness Street, New York NY 10012. +1.212.725.6092.newyork@aicongallry.com |
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