New Voices in Cinema: Up Down & Sideways

We are proud to present the 8th edition of Toto Funds the Arts (TFA): New Voices in Indian Cinema with a screening of the multiple-award-winning documentary Up, Down and Sideways. 

Close to the India-Myanmar border is the village of Phek in Nagaland. Around 5000 people live here, almost all of whom cultivate rice for their own consumption. As they work in cooperative groups — preparing the terraced fields, planting saplings, or harvesting the grain and carrying it up impossibly steep slopes — the rice cultivators of Phek sing. The seasons change, and so does the music. Stories of love, stories of the field, stories of song, stories in song.

Up, Down & Sideways is a musical portrait of a community of rice cultivators and their memories of love and loss. 

The film has been supported by the India Foundation for the Arts.

About the filmmakers
 
Anushka Meenakshi has worked as a filmmaker, and a community video trainer. Iswar Srikumar is an actor and a lighting/sound designer for theatre. Iswar and Anushka are both members of Perch, a performance collective in Chennai comprising artists from various disciplines. In 2011, they started the u-ra-mi-li project ('the song of our people'), which focuses on stories about music in the everyday, through writing, photography, performance and film and Up, Down & Sideways is their first feature-length film from the u-ra-mi-li project, that looks at the connections between music and labour. 

Both the directors will be present for a discussion after the screening.

Watch the Trailer on YouTube