Newsletter- November 2002


   Contents:

   I    Media  Art Presentation @ Sarai
   II    Reading @ Sarai
   III    Tactical Media  Lab @Sarai
   IV    Films @ Sarai: Italian Neo Realism
   V    Call for Proposals: The Daily Life of Intellectual Property Law
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   Dear Friends,
   November is a busy month at Sarai. We start the month with an
   introduction to Italian Neo-Realist cinema followed by three classic
   films in the genre.
   November is also a month of presentations by residents, a novelist and
   an artist, who have been at Sarai since September.
   And in November Sarai will be hosting the Tactical Media Lab with
   participants from South Asia and the Middle East.
   We look forward to engaging with you at all these events this November
   at Sarai.

   I. Media Art Presentation @Sarai
   Wednesday, November 6, 4:30 pm, Seminar Room
   The Kiss:  Sound and Video Artwork &
   Time Lapsed, New Media Performance Improvisation
   by Dylan Volkhardt,
   Independent Australian media artist,
   followed by the internationally award-winning documentary, 
   Eternity (1994), 56 mins, Australia
   Directed by Lawrence Johnston.
  
   ...For forty years in one city a word was written on the street...the
   word was  "eternity". Always the same, written in chalk copperplate
   script, appearing overnight like frost on the streets of Sydney.
   Sometimes it would last for days, weeks, even months...  eventually it
   would be washed away by the rain or blown away by the wind...  but its
   memory lingered in the minds of many. In 1956, twenty years after the
   word first    appeared, the writer was discovered and Arthur Stace
   became known to many as Mr Eternity. Some have said he was a "Great
   Writer! The Original Graffiti Artist!" Others have denounced him as an
   eccentric.
   Director Lawrence Johnston's film is an orchestration of beautiful
   black and white cinematography with the music of Ross Edwards. In
   1994, the year of its making,  'Eternity' went on to win a number of
   awards including the Best Documentary, Australian Film Critics Circle;
   Best Cinematography, Australian Film Institute Awards & the
   Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.
   Dylan Volkhardt has been on a residency at Sarai with support from the
   Australia Council for the Arts since September 2002 and has been
   working on an installation project with Renu S. Iyer and Girija Vohra
   from the Sarai Media Lab. The work will be presented at the Tactical
   Media Lab later this month.

   II.Reading @ Sarai
   Thursday, Nov 7, 5:30 pm, Sarai Interface Zone
   Meaghan Delahunt reads from her first novel, 'In The Blue House'
   Hounded from country to country by Stalin's GPU agents in January 1937
   Leon Trotsky finally finds refuge in Mexico. There he encounters the
   fire and splendour of the artist Frida Kahlo, who with her husband,
   Diego Rivera, welcomes Trotsky and his wife Natalia into the Blue
   House at Coyoacan.
   Meaghan Delahunt's first novel unravels the passions and betrayals of
   Trotsky's years in Mexico, and spreads before the reader a panorama of
   Russian history, revolution and upheaval throughout the first half of
   the twentieth century. We hear from Stalin's desolate young wife and
   Trotsky's Ukrainian Jewish father, baffled by the dissolution of his
   own estate and the rise of his son, and from Trotsky himself, still
   smarting from his brief love affair with the mesmerising Frida.
   'In the Blue House', won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, in the Best
   Book category in SE Asia and South Pacific, and the Saltire Society
   Award in Scotland.
   Meaghan Delahunt was born in Melbourne and currently lives in
   Edinburgh. In 1997 she won the Flamingo/HQ National short story award
   in Australia. Her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and
   nominated for the Macallan short story prize in Scotland.
   She has been in residency at Sarai, with the support of the Asialink
   Literature Residency Programme, since September 2002, and is working
   on her second novel, 'The Prayer Wheel', set in India.

   III. Tactical Media Lab @Sarai
   November 14-16, 2002
   At Sarai, we see 'Tactical Media" as ways of working with old and new
   information technologies, ranging from print to photocopying to free
   software and the internet, to produce easy, accessible, low cost and
   low tech forms of democratic cultural politics, communication
   practices and social interventions.
   The Tactical Media Lab  (TML) is one of a chain of such events, that
   are taking place in different parts of the world (Amsterdam,
   Barcelona, Cluj, New York, Delhi and Sydney) as a means of leading up
   to the fourth Next 5 Minutes Conference in Amsterdam in 2003. For more
   on the N5M4 and Tactical Media see www.n5m4.org
  
   What can you do at the TML @ Sarai ?
    >> Interact and network with some of the most interesting Tactical
   Media projects around today - including the Bytesforall South Asian
   Network, Open Circle, Indymedia Mumbai, One World South Asia and the
   Sarai Cybermohalla Project.
   >> Learn about Gnu/Linux, Free/Libre Software and Open Source with the
   Sarai Gnu/Linux Access Project and the Linux Users Group, Delhi.
    >>  Find out what is happening on the localization of computing and
   free software in Hindi, Bengali, Nepali and Persian..
    >> Debate on issues of the social implications of creativity and
   collaboration in digital culture.
    >> Participate in a workshop on Innovative Print Strategies for
   Campaigns.     
    >> Watch 'The Code', the film on the making of Gnu/Linux.
    >> Get involved with the initiation of an Asian Network for Digital
   Democracy
   Who should be interested in the TML ?
   Free software enthusiasts, activists, media practitioners, students
   and anyone  interested in using communications technologies for social
   interventions.
  
   Invited Speakers and Presentations:
   ArashZeini, LinuxIran & the Farsi KDE Project
   Arun Mehta, Telecom Engineer & Internet Activist, Member, N5M4
  
   Editorial Board
   Gaurab Upadhyay, Bytesforall, Kathmandu
   Kishore Bhargava, Linux Users Group, Delhi
   Leo Fernandes, Linux Users Group, Delhi
   Open Circle Artists Collective, Mumbai
   Osama Manzar, Founder-Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation
   Kanti Kumar, One World South Asia
   Partha Pratim Sarkar, Bytesforall, Dhaka
   Prabhat, Ankur : Society for Alternatives in Education
   Pradip Saha, Designer, Editor - "Down To Earth" Magazine
   Raju Mathur, Linux Users Group, Delhi
   Sanjay Sharma, co-editor, Divan-e-Sarai
   Sharad Kukreti, Software Freedom, Dehradun
   Shaina Anand, Media Activist, Mumbai
   Shekhar Krishnan and Sanjay Bhangar, Indymedia, Mumbai
   And , from Sarai
   Jeebesh Bagchi, Mrityunjoy Chatterjee, Monica Narula, Pankaj Kaushal,
   Ranita Chatterjee, Ravikant, Ravi Sundaram, Shuddhabrata Sengupta,
   Supreet
   Sethi, Shveta Sharda & Tripta
   To register write in soon at dak at sarai.net

   IV. Films @ Sarai: Italian Neo Realism
   To celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Italian Neo Realist Cinema we
   screen three classic movies this month by the Italian masters. This
   series is curated by Madan Gopal Singh, Film Scholar, Scriptwriter,
   Singer-Musician & Co-ordinator, Cinema Studies, School of Convergence,
   New Delhi.
   All screenings are on Fridays, 4:30 pm, at the Seminar Room, Centre
   for the Study of Developing Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi -110054.
   The films are listed in the order of screening.
  
    November 1, 2002, 4:30 pm
    Rome Citta Aperta (Rome Open City)
    Director: Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 1945, 105 mins
  
   Shortly after the liberation of Italy in 1945, Roberto Rossellini took
   to the war ravaged streets of Rome and filmed a highly unsettling, yet
   profoundly affirming story of the struggle and defiance of ordinary
   people in the face of human adversity, and created the indelible image
   of Rome Open City. Using narrative, documentary styled filmmaking that
   would come to be known as neorealism, Rome Open City chronicles the
  plight, not of individual characters, but of the collective soul of
   the Italian people.
   Filmed in austere conditions, the technical imperfections of Rome Open
   City effectively contribute to the film's overall cinema verite
   appearance. The uneven film stock, salvaged from scrap reels, create a
   realistic, documentary appearance, blurring the distinction between
   the created story and the realized drama of post-war turmoil. The
   inconsistent lighting seems to reflect the frequent brownouts
   characteristic of fuel shortages and energy rationing. The rawness
   of Rome Open City  elicits a sense of realism to the film, as if experiencing
   an actual recorded document of a tragic period in history. It is also a
   testament to humanity's tenacity and perseverance, to the inexorable
   power of compassion and dignity.
   
   November 8, 2002, 4:30 pm
   La Terra Trema (The Earth Moved)
   Director: Luchino Visconti; Italy, 1948, 162 mins
 
   After his controversial Ossessione, Visconti began to plan a
   documentary trilogy with "La Terra Trema" as the first installment.
   The trilogy never materialized; instead, Visconti brought forth this
   gritty docudrama which focused on a family of Sicilian fishermen who
   battle the elements, an oppressive social system and their own fates
   to earn a living.
   Based on the Giovanni Verga novel, I Malavolgia, La Terra Trema was
   shot in the peasant fishing village of Acitrezza in southern Italy,
   and captures the local dialect of the indigenous non-professional (and
   uncredited) actors.  In contrast to Visconti's later, more embellished
   films, the camerawork in La Terra Trema is distilled, minimalist, and
   documentary. Visconti uses medium and
   long shots, graceful pans, location shooting, and natural lighting to
   reflect the austerity and simple beauty of peasant life: the
   fishermen's daily preparations before sailing out to sea; the line of
   fishing boats demarcating the horizon against a
   setting sun; the Valestro women standing on the rocks amid crashing
   waves, scanning the turbulent sea.
  
   November 22, 2002, 4:30 pm
   Umberto D
   Director: Vittorio de Sica; Italy, 1952, 83 mins

   Umberto Domenico Ferrari (Carlo Battisti) is a proud, retired civil
   servant struggling to eke out a meager existence on his government
   pension. The film opens one morning to a group of pensioners,
   including the frail Umberto, taking their case for equitable
   compensation to the streets of Rome, only for their demonstration to
   be quashed by the local police for failing to file a permit. Umberto's
   rent is in arrears, and despite his twenty year residence at the
   house, his landlady has threatened to evict him if he is unable to
   settle his debt by the end of the month. His only sources of comfort
   are his faithful and well-behaved dog, Flag, and the landlady's
   cheerful, attentive maid, Maria, who is equally in danger of losing
   her employment and lodging after discovering that she is pregnant.
   Through the recurring imagery of motion and activity, de Sica
   contrasts Umberto's age and wavering sense of purpose with the
   vitality of hope and the process of living: the pensioner
   demonstration; the hurried pace of commuters; the passing of cable
   cars; the children playing. Vittorio de Sica presents an honest,
   unsentimental and profoundly moving portrait on aging, dignity and
   resilience in Umberto D.
   We will be unable to screen any film on the last friday of November
   (ie the 29th) as the Seminar Room will be busy. We will resume regular
   screenings in December.

   V. Call for Proposals: 
   Sarai and Alternative Law Forum welcomes applications from students
   interested in attending a work shop on
            
        THE DAILY LIFE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

   We are looking for students who are interested in critical research on
   issues related to IPR, the public domain and issues arising from new
   technologies. Students will be paid a stipend to attend the workshop.
   One of the aims of the workshop is to get students interested in
   emerging  areas of research to begin a dialogue with each other and
   become a part of a larger research community, critically examining
   issues of law and culture.
   Please note that we want something concrete to come out of the
   workshop so students interested in attending it should look to
   contribute significantly and not merely attend for the purpose of
   scoring brownie points on their CV.
   Interested students should send in a small essay responding to the
   concept  note along with a (very) small CV or Bio data. For the
   concept note please go to
   https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law
   and  look for 'The daily life of IPR' in the archive.
   Applications can be sent either by good old fashioned snail mail to:
   Lawrence Liang
   Alternative Law Forum
   No. 122/4, Infantry Road,
   Bangalore- 560001
   Or by email to lawrenceliang at vsnl.net
   The Workshop will be held on December 20-21, 2002, at Sarai, 29 Rajpur
   Road, Delhi 110054.

   That's what we have this November. Watch out for detailed schedules of
   the Tactical Media Lab soon in your mailboxes.
  
   Cheers,
   Ranita
   The Sarai Programme
   Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
   29 Rajpur Road, Delhi - 110054.
   www.sarai.net