Review: Spiralling Into Desire

by Keya | Sep 3, 2024

Review: Spiralling Into Desire

A personal review of Spiralling Into Desire, a live performance by Brinda Jacob-Janvrin hosted at KAASH Foundation. For better context please refer to the trailer down below.

My first encounter with Spiralling Into Desire was its 2022 film release and screening. As an early student of Brinda and the daughter of her designer/publicist, I came in clueless, offering mere moral support. Today, two years later, I revel in the aftertaste of her adaptation to its live performance.

What I admired about the piece was its value of sensory and creative intersections in its execution. Almost intentionally in theme with desire, the performance was felt, more than just seen. There was a conscious interplay of video art installation, acoustic ambience, and narrative depth that flowed within each other through Brinda’s command over authentic movement. I was soon led to realise there was little ignorance I could feign to dismiss the piece as a daunting abstraction. While it had its conceptual ambiguities, there was a mutual vulnerability it captured: the abandonment of the subject and the discomfort of its watching audience. A discomfort that drew an uncanny envy of the performer’s taste of freedom in her autonomy, like a prerequisite hurl for the relief of its aftermath. I envied such abandon.

The piece is contextualised through the epic poem The Descent of Inanna. The Sumerian myth traces Inanna’s journey to the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal who is in labour. Goddess of the underworld, Ereshkigal awaits her sister’s arrival as she grieves the recent death of her husband. Inanna’s descent is paused at an interval of seven gates, each stripping her of her possessions until she arrives naked and rid of identity in the underworld. Enraged by this disrespect, Ershikegel rewards Inanna with the eye of death and turns her into a corpse of meat to hang from a hook on the wall. The sisters together in their grief, share a coexistence of birth and death.

Brinda approaches this duality among the sisters as a comparison to Freud’s Madonna-Whore complex*, urging a union of the two. She takes us through Inanna’s extrapolated descent, a vulnerable breakdown of how Desire latches onto her subconscious body, with a conscious unravelling of its spiritual truth. She achieves this in dream sequences, where expressive movement, live music, and video art embed us deep into the emotional intensity of this separation. While the depth and detail of the performance deserve a second watch, there is a suitable balance of narrative exposition and sensory captivation that support her act. Appealing to an audience broad enough to both conceptualise and feel the activism in her intent. Which I can very well admit as a viewer who came in with little to no reference other than as moral support, but left with an itch to ponder the inspiration it gave me.

A beautiful takeaway that Brinda cleverly iterates, is that once a woman’s desire crosses the threshold of fear, desire is stripped of its identity – it becomes our reality.

*Conceptualised by Freud, the Madonna-Whore complex, (or psychic impotence), is said to develop in heterosexual cisgender men who see women as either saintly Madonnas or debased whores. Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love.

Negotiating Identity: PERSEPOLIS

by Keya | Jun 9, 2024

Negotiating Identity: PERSEPOLIS

A video essay on diasporic cinema: cultural negotiation of identity within the context of urban alienation using the film Persepolis and intergenerational discourse as my case study.

script

The beauty of cinema as a medium of representation is its ability to offer perspective and diverse expression of identity. Diasporic cinema is a genre of cultural negotiation regarding individuals in exile residing in a country away from their homeland. The medium taps into a selection of identity expression that deals with a complex conflict of cultural residue within the adaptation to a new environment.

Marjane Satrapi, is an acclaimed Iranian-born French graphic novelist, illustrator, and film director. Her internationally recognised graphic novel, Persepolis became an animated film adaptation in 2007. The film considers an autobiographical encounter of a young girl growing up within the backdrop of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Satrapi’s diasporic navigation through the complexities of coming of age in revolutionary Iran and later as an immigrant in Europe construct a tension between collective and individual identity. This case study approaches her narrative through a broader intergenerational discourse that supports the topic of identity negotiation, further intersecting into conversations on gender and cultural identity.

[Persepolis – Exclusive: Chiara Mastroianni]

The article, Out of the Family: Generations of Women in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis by Nancy K. Miller offers a redefinition of the notion of generation in terms of chronology. Her analogy states that generation can be understood in a parallel corporeal mental space through a collective coexistence of historic or cultural context. The realism of dialogue and memory, as recalled by Satrapi in her film, forms a collective intergenerational experience which transcends hierarchy in generation. Persepolis supports this coexistence of intergenerational identity through the lens of traumatic bonds and collective grief. The film uses its medium of animation to play with visual interludes to the narrative. After a democratic vote for the Islamic Republic, the three generations of the Satrapi family reveal a consequence of the change. Marjane’s innocent ignorance, her uncle Anoush’s reassurance, her grandmother’s distaste, her mother’s contemplation of escape, and finally her father’s reminder of their reality. With each generation, there comes a background of privilege, class and ideology in the way they face the consequences of the regime. And although Marji was granted freedom, it came at the cost of generational guilt, and conflict in cultural identity.

Marjane’s relationship with her grandmother is reflective of the tension she has with her cultural identity and the one she begins to curate to fit in abroad. The flower motif, for instance, is a recurring symbol throughout the film that toys with sensory recollection through visual repetition. The jasmine flower marks Marjane’s departure from her homeland, which becomes a reminder of her cultural identity in association with her grandmother. Yet, when she is confronted with her grandmother for rejecting her Iranian identity, their conversation is in the shadows. It indicates that as much as Marjane can attempt to alter her identity to adapt better abroad, her past will remain in her shadow and its rejection is futile. Marjane’s gradual acceptance of her dual identity is what liberates her to follow the dreams of those who did not have the same opportunity as her: their dream of freedom in identity and expression. It is with such acceptance though, that she is faced with the cost of distance and loss. Satrapi’s reason for writing the novel, and further directing this film is her attempt to reconnect with such distance and preserve what she can of her Iranian identity. And much like millions of exiles or immigrants, her story resonates universally.

Chhan Chhan

by Keya | Jun 6, 2024

Chhan Chhan

Short film adapted from Lihaaf, by Ismat Chugtai. The ideation and final product were a collaborative effort, in which I was selectively responsible for writing the script.

Process

The prompt given was an end-sem group short film adaptation of any short story of our choice, keeping in mind the learnings over a film adaptation course. My personal priority initially, was to use a simple yet effective source text which could both offer a space for creative adaptation and resemble the depth of the story adapted. My group mate, Sharif had recently watched our classmate Aditi, perform a Kathak piece for one of her assignments and was enamoured by the visual narrative it conveys. Sharif then proposed that we could use the form of dance in our adaptation, which I agreed was a great place to start. Sharif had also mentioned that he was keen to use the short story Lihaaf, by Ismat Chugtai.

Due to my, and my group’s unfamiliar background or knowledge of Indian classical dance, we decided to start by speaking to classmates, Maitreyi, and Aditi who come from Bharatnatyam and Kathak backgrounds respectively. Matreyi laid out the entire historic foundation of Bharatanatyam as per her knowledge which is where my group began to draw parallels to how we could adapt it with Lihaaf. I proposed that we could resemble the age hierarchy between the protagonist in Lihaaf and her aunt, Begum Jaan with a guru and shishya dynamic present in dance. Similarly, we ideated that the maid/helper from the source text could be an assistant or advanced student of the guru. Once we had ideated the roles we would resemble, we moved on to how we could capture key narrative elements and themes.

Sharif and I sat down and verbally ideated the progression of events that would take place, and how we would incorporate our little knowledge of dance to portray it. We deliberated how we could implement the complexity of female sexuality, age-based power dynamics, devotion and trauma, enabling the form of dance as a unique visual tool in the manner we could deal with it. We agreed the usage of shadow play from the source text was an impactful way to represent such themes, especially trauma, due to the uncanny discomfort and fear it instils in viewers. We were also interested in using aural symbols to further exemplify these themes, which is how we settled on using the sound of ghungroos. This is where we proposed the title Chhan Chhan, which would transition during the narrative from an amusing, pleasant sound to a more jarring and traumatic one. We composed the rough outline to the rest of our group, along with Aditi, who gave us insight into the role that Kathak could play in the story.

At this stage, we were satisfied with our progress and vision and met with our course Professor, Kunal Ray to propose the idea and gain any further inputs. He suggested how we could resemble our source text better, in terms of establishing a domestic space to offer an equation of proximity, the use of dialogue in enabling the narrative or in suggesting nuances of the themes, and how to develop the relationship between the guru and her assistant before introducing the student. Once we took note of the feedback, our group began preparing logistics and working on the script.

As I was the primary script writer for the film, I faced challenges grasping how to portray our idea in written text, especially considering our dependency on dance to convey the narrative. I spoke to a couple of other dancers that I had known, which greatly helped me visualise and implement detail in how we could approach the adaptation.

We took note of nuances which differentiate the form of Bharatnatyam and Kathak (the way they spin, bend their knees, pay respects to their guru, etc.), which I used to establish the growing relationship between Kalki and Alka. Further, my mother suggested I use the Gopi Vastraharan during the climax since the narrative sequence resembled our theme appropriately. Similar to how the gopi’s are expected to venture out of the water naked and vulnerable in devotion to their lord Krishna, Kalki expresses her devotion to Alka, by completing her performance even after there is evident shame and discomfort once she has been taken advantage of. There is a clear silence between the two, where Alka dismisses this discomfort, and Kalki is not in a position to express herself. The interplay of shadows in this scene was intended as a visual tool to reflect Kalki’s mental state and disturbance which is once again repeated when she reattempts the performance the next day alone. This establishes the intrusion of her trauma into the space of her passion for learning Kathak, opening questions of devotion, sexuality and trauma. I proposed the script to my team, after which Rohan helped me refine the dialogues.

Zahanya was primarily responsible for reaching out to actors and planning the shooting schedule with our available location, equipment and time requirements. Before shooting, we sat down with our actors to brief them of our plan, the script and which days we were aiming to shoot. At this stage, we gained more input on how to alter our dialogues (during the exposition of our story), such that they did not offend the form we were using, and said just enough to establish context for our film. We adjusted the script accordingly and began shooting.

Our single location was a campus dance studio which allowed us the freedom to shoot over a span of 3 days without too many continuity errors. Our only barrier was the mirrors in the room, which Sharif managed to skillfully leverage to work with our narrative. For example, the abundance of reflections of Kalki during her solo performance heightens the emotional intensity of her turmoil. He very carefully took over the shooting process, with the help of his friends who were familiar with using the equipment. Sharif then edited the film, which we were overall very satisfied with as a group.

The overall process gave me a great deal of insight into not only how to work with adaptation from a text to a visual medium, but also the tedious effort and collaboration it requires to accomplish. I was very passionate about the direction my group took and found the discovery of Indian classical dance as our channel, extremely rewarding.

Lost & Found

by Keya | Jun 6, 2024

Lost & Found

A short story that has been refined into a script from a 10th-grade essay prompt – Lost & Found. The notion that, to be found, one must have been lost in the first place, inspired an association that the two concepts are codependent. I then attempted to envision this through the personification of two characters lacking an ability, which they can find in the presence of one another. My creation of this short story into a film challenged me to push my boundaries as a writer dependent on words, to a writer that can incorporate this thought into a visual medium. I precisely imagine the script to follow an animation format, deeply inspired by the sketchy colour-dense illustrations of Holly Warburton.