A film by Shaunak Sen
Duration: 77 minutes, Hindi with English Subtitles
Synopsis:
The film takes us into a heady world of insurgent sleeper’s communities as well as the infamous ‘sleep markets’ in Delhi where just securing a safe sleeping spot often becomes a question of life and death for a large number of people.
The film trails the lives of two individuals, Shakeel and Ranjeet. Shakeel, a renegade homeless sleeper has for the last 7 years slept in a diverse range of improvised places like subways, under park benches, parking lots, abandoned cars and lately, at areas controlled by the sleep mafia. The film follows his attempts to secure a safe sleeping space just around the time the infamous winter rains of Delhi are due.
Ranjeet runs the ‘sleep-cinema’ community in Loha Pul in Delhi, a huge double-storey iron bridge straddling the banks of the river Yamuna. A thin strip of land under Loha Pul houses shanty cinemas where over 400 odd homeless come and sleep through the day for a nominal price. The flooding of the river Yamuna poses a threat to the people sleeping there every monsoon.
The film looks at not only the tremendous social and political pressure that sleep exerts on the homeless in the city but is also a philosophical exploration of sleep at large.
The film has been screened in a number of national and international festivals around the world and mention must be made of the following:
Indian Premier - MAMI International Film Festival
Asian Premier - Taiwan International Film Festival.
European Premier - Dok Leipzig, Germany
North American Premier - New York Indian Film Festival.
Some reviews:
New York Times
The Atlantic
Himal South Asian
Mint Live review
Scroll.in
Indian Express
CatchNews
- Official facebook page
Shaunak Sen is a filmmaker and researcher based in Delhi. ‘Cities of Sleep’ (2016), was his first feature length documentary that was showed at various major international film festivals including DOKLeipzig- Germany, DMZ docs - Korea, MAMI film festival - Mumbai and so on. Shaunak received the ProHelvetia residency, Switzerland (2016); the
Charles Wallace Grant (2018), the Sarai-CSDS Digital Media fellowship (2014), the Films Division of India fellowship (2013), the IDFA grant (2019), and the Sundance Grant (2019). Shaunak is enrolled in a PhD in cinema studies in JNU currently.
TO WATCH THE FILM, PLEASE CLICK HERE
After the screening, from about 8:00 pm IST, you can join the film maker Shaunak Sen for a live discussion on Facebook.
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The discussion will begin after the first screening of the film is over at 8:00 pm IST on 20 May 2020.
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