Monday, May 19, 2014
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Lenart Auditorium
Fowler Museum
Los Angeles, CA
Kamakha Through Prayerful Eyes
A film by Aparna Sharma
UCLA World Arts & Cultures/Dance
There will be a light reception at 6:00 preceding the film.
Poetics of the Invisible
How can a documentarist visualize the "Inivisible?"
With this as a cue, Kamakha: Through Prayerful Eyes (2013) documents the disparate ways by which devotees and visitors to Goddess Kamakhya’s shrine in Assam, northeast India, visualize a Goddess who is concealed and remains unseen. Composed over two years, this film explores possibilities for a poetic and sensory documentary experience.The screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker, Aparna Sharma (World Arts and Cultures/Dance), moderated by Allyson Nadia Field (UCLA Film Television and Digital Media)
About the Film:
"
Kamakha Through Prayerful Eyes is a finely crafted, lyrical exploration of a sacred site. Taking as her focus the space around the Kamakyha Temple, filmmaker Aparna Sharma weaves a rich tapestry of sound, light, and color to suggest the deeply sensory nature of pilgrimage.” — Ana Grimshaw, Professor, The Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University
"Here is an insider's view of a remarkably rich and vibrant form of worship. Filmmaker Sharma’s use of a discrete, observational camera style together with titles, interviews, and reflexive comments on the interviews shows a deft cinematic hand at work." -- Bill Nichols, Professor of Cinema, San Francisco State University
The Asia Institute's initiative on the Humanities in Asia/Asia in the Humanities brings together scholars from the fields of history, literature, religion, and the arts working across time periods and Asian spaces to develop new frames of research and pedagogy. For further information about the initiative and its programs,
click here.
international.ucla.edu/asia/
Sponsor(s): Asia Pacific Center