Directed by Nitin Bathla and Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou
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Not Just Roads is a feature-length documentary film, which explores the recent history of planetary entanglements between the built environment, monetary speculation, and everyday life. It focuses on the sensorium of an urban expressway located on the peripheries of Delhi, the Dwarka Expressway. This expressway is being constructed as a part of the Indian government's
Bharatmala (‘Garland of Limitless Roads’) programmme, which aims to add a total of 65,400 kilometres of new highways to the existing network of highways in India.
The film captures the friction between the social and material lives of competing worlds, shifting between the worlds outside and inside the gated utopias along the expressway. It journeys through working class neighbourhoods undergoing demolition, construction landscapes, protests sites, and the persuasive pitches by real estate salesmen attempting to sell dreamscapes.
Credits
Directed, written & produced by: Nitin Bathla and Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou
With Support from: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, India Office, ETH Zürich, Andromeda Film AG
Cinematography & Sound Recording: Nitin Bathla
Editing: Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou
Sound Design & Mixing: Ludwig Berger
Post-Production: Patrick Lindenmaier, Davide Legittimo, Andromeda Film AG
Graphic & Title Design: Claudia Sinatra and Metaxia Markaki
Nitin Bathla
Born in 1986 in India, Nitin has a Bachelor of Architecture (2004-09) and a Master of Advanced Studies, Urban Design, from ETH Zürich (2012-13). Nitin is an architect, artist, and educator currently pursuing Doctoral Studies at ETH Zurich. His work focuses on labour migration, land ecology, and housing in the extended urban region of Delhi. Aside from academic writing, he works on films, community art projects, and social design projects.
Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou
Born in 1989, Klearjos is a Greek/Mexican filmmaker interested in ethnography as a filmmaking methodology. His films and collaborations include
The Seven Sisters Indoor Market (2016),
The Disappearance of Robin Hood (2018), and
Not Just Roads (2020). He is currently based in Zürich, where he teaches ethnographic filmmaking at the urban scale at the ETHZ.
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) India
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) is one of the oldest foundations in Germany, kind of a think+do tank, which remains loyal to the legacy of its founder Friedrich-Ebert, who was Germany’s first democratically elected president. FES works on the core ideas and values of social democracy: freedom, justice and solidarity; their international cooperation work is spread across more than 100 countries around the world. FES has been active in India since the 1980s, building platforms for the exchange of progressive discourses and the fostering of debates on national, regional, and global levels. The main areas of focus for FES India are - Gender and Social Justice, Socio-Economic Transformation (Future of Work and Social-Ecological Transformation), Labour and Industrial Relations and Foreign and Security Policy. International commitments such as the SDGs, the Paris Agreement, and India's own ambition to be the environmental steward provide the framework for social-ecological transformation. FES India aims to develop knowledge products and networks on sustainable urban development with environmental sustainability, economic stability and equity as its core. Crafting narratives and common practices that link climate action to just energy transition is another objective pursued by FES and its partners. Protections of jobs and interest of workers, climate justice, intergenerational justice, gender justice and sustainable development for all, form the backbone of the just energy transition work of FES.
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