In the Forest One Thing Can Look Like Another
Synopsis
In The Forest One Thing Can Look Like Another is constructed through the director’s personal experience of living in the remote Himalayan mountain town of Manali, a historically popular destination for shooting Bollywood film songs. The glacial landscape of Manali has become a site where projections of the idyllic countryside are directed—rife with tropes of adventure, eroticism, and romance. The work interrogates this thin layer of narrative practices; constructing tableaus of high altitude mountains as static objects and backdrops for secondhand urban aspirations to happiness while the precarious reality of living in a highly sensitive ecosystem spins an adventure far removed from most imaginaries.
Schedule
1st Screening
6 December 2023, 15:30 GMT+7
Credits
Priyanka Chhabra
Priyanka works as a film director and editor exploring themes of memory, landscape, and relationships of people to places. She articulates her practice as an archaeology of silences digging at sites characterised by trauma–physical and emotional. Her recent work focuses on reconciling memories and experiences of the Partition of Punjab (1947), Iqraar-naama (2022) (supported by IFA, Bangalore) being her most recent work on the subject. Currently, she is working on an artist’s book My Voice Is As Brittle As The Paper You Write On, as the third iteration of her work on the Partition of Punjab. Other works include Pichla Varka (The Previous Page) (2018) and A Summer Flu (2013). She lives and works in Delhi.
