Austrálie, 2014, 55 min
David MacDougall
30.01.2016 21:25
From the 16th century the Indian village of Delwara in southern Rajastan was ruled as a principality of the kingdom of Mewar. Its palace, which overlooks the village, is now a luxury hotel – a world remote from the daily life of villagers. Following off from his film SchoolScapes, which was inspired by the early cinema of Lumiere, David MacDougall here employs a series of precisely observed scenes to explore Delwara´s local primary school as a part of contemporary village life – a life that continues „under the palace wall“.
David MacDougall is an ethnographic filmmaker and writer on cinema. He has filmed in East Africa (The Jie films and „Turkana Conversation“ trilogy), Australia, and India. In 2005 he filmed at a shelter for homeless children in New Delhi, producing Gandhi´s Children. MacDougall writes regulary on cinema and is the author of Transcultural Cinema and The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography , and the Sense. He is presently Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University, where he is directing the project „Childhood and Modernity: Indian Children´s Perspectives“.
Language of dialogues: Merwari
Language of subtitles: English, Czech
Production: Fieldwork Films
Camera, edit: David MacDougall
Festivals (selection):
Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York 2014
Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival 2014
Jean Rouch Film Festival, Paris, 2014
NAFA film Festival 2014
Royal Anthropological Institute International Ethnographic Film Festival, Bristol 2015