Tag: Max Mueller Bhavan

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Attend: Launch of ‘Rest in Peace’ by Kiran Nagarkar

The celebrated author will unveil the the third book in the Ravan and Eddie trilogy this evening at Kala Ghoda.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The phenomenal success of Ravan And Eddie after its publication in 1994 made its author Kiran Nagarkar one of India’s most celebrated literary names. He followed up this novel with Cuckold three years later, for which he won the Sahitya Akademi award.

The story of a Maratha Hindu and a Catholic boy growing up together in a Mumbai chawl, Ravan and Eddie was an incisive look into the city’s chawl life. Unrelenting in its grimness but laced with everyday humour and a generous amount of pathos, the story resonated with readers in a way that few city-based works had.

Today, Nagarkar will unveil the third book in the Ravan and Eddie trilogy – Rest in Peace. The book will be unveiled at Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda. Actor Shabana Azmi will launch the book and read from it, while journalist Naresh Fernandes will lead a critique on the book.

The event is free and open to all. The launch starts at 6 pm, Gallerie Max Mueller.

(Picture courtesy kirannagarkar.com)

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Watch

Watch: German film ‘Hotel Lux’

Hotel Lux
The 2011 film set in Nazi Germany talks about fleeing an autocratic rule into what could be more dangerous territory.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Hotel Lux is a 2011 German period film directed by Leander Haußmann. The tragicomedy begins in Nazi Germany and moves to the Soviet Union. Featuring the main character Hans Zeisig, an apolitical comedian, the picture involves him with numerous historical facts and figures of this era.

The story of the film goes thus: Hans Zeisig and Siggi Meyer are a comedy act. At the Varieté Valetti, they do a brilliant parody of Hitler and Stalin – unperturbed by initial threats and intimidations. But that will not go on for much longer. Meyer goes into hiding in the Resistance, gets caught and is taken to a concentration camp. Zeisig is forced to flee with a false passport and ends up in Moscow, in the notorious immigrants’ hotel Lux. The Soviet secret services mistake him for Hitler’s renegade astrologer; Zeisig interprets the stars for Stalin and gets caught up in the power struggle between Stalin’s schemers. Zeisig loves Frida, an underground resistance fighter from Holland, who protects him until she lands herself in trouble.

 

Head to Gallerie Max Mueller, Kala Ghoda. Film begins at 6.30 pm. Entry is free.

(Picture courtesy www.ruhrnachrichten.de)

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Event

Attend: Kiran Nagarkar presents ‘Bedtime Story’

Noted author of ‘Ravan and Eddie’ will read his famous story, and screenplay ‘Black Tulip’ this evening at Kala Ghoda.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

If you like writer Kiran Nagarkar’s work, you will certainly want to be at Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, this evening.

Nagarkar will launch and read out excerpts from his controversial play Bedtime Story, which, playwrights say is “a very disturbing play – and that in an era of theatre when it is very hard to disturb audiences.” The play was written in 1982 and Nagarkar found it extremely hard to get it staged because of its controversial, experimental content. The story of the play is a retelling of the Mahabharata, in which the reader is presented with the Pandavas as flawed heroes with follies, and the Kauravas as only marginally worse. The choice, then, is between what is dark and what is darker. After the play’s content was censored and actors became afraid to be a part of the project, it was first performed in 1995 in Mumbai.

The writer will also launch the screenplay of Black Tulip, at the same event. He will be in conversation with senior journalist Srinivasan Jain about the many issues his two works raise.

Head to Gallerie, Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, this evening at 6 pm. Entry is free.

(Picture courtesy livemint.com. Image is a file picture)

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Event

Attend: ‘Museum of Chance’, a photo-book release

Singh’s photographic sequence of her own work ‘Go Away Closer’ is titled ‘Chance’ and opens for public viewing in Mumbai.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Dayanita Singh’s Museum of Chance (2014) is a book about how life unfolds, and asks to be recorded and edited, along and off the axis of time. The inscrutably woven photographic sequence of Singh’s Go Away Closer has now grown into a labyrinth of connections and correspondences. The thread through this novel-like web of happenings is that elusive entity called Chance. It is Chance that seems to disperse as well as gather fragments or clusters of experience, creating a form of simultaneity that is realized in the idea and matter of the book, with its interlaced or parallel timelines and patterns of recurrence and return. “While I was in London I dreamed that I was on a boat on the Thames,” Singh writes in the book’s epigraph, “which took me to the Anandmayee Ma ashram in Varanasi. I climbed the stairs and found I had entered the hotel in Devigarh. At a certain time I tried to leave the fort but could not find a door. Finally I climbed out through a window and I was in the moss garden in Kyoto.”

The 88 quadratone images in the book also appear on the front and back covers in random pairs, transforming each copy of the book into a distinct piece of work by the author. ‘’Exhibitions come and go,” Singh says in an interview, “but what remains is the book’’. Each copy of Museum of Chance, therefore, is mass-produced as well as unique because of the random combination of images on its front and back covers and the different colored cloth covers. Moving away from showing editioned prints framed on the wall, Singh makes the book itself the art object, to be valued, looked at and read as such, rather than being regarded as a gathering of photographic reproductions. Infact the Book in its special structure is the work, as were  her silver gelatin prints, and the images inside could be seen as the catalogue of this exhibition of the 88 book covers.

One of the finest photographic artists in the world, Dayanita Singh has always seen herself as a bookmaker working with photography. She has published several mass produced artist books in the course of her career like Go Away Closer (2007), Sent a Letter (2008), Blue Book (2009), Dream Villa (2010), Dayanita Singh (2010), House of Love (2011) and File Room (2013), among others. She has also presented her work in several solo and group exhibitions like Go Away Closer, a solo exhibition at Museum Für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2014); Dayanita Singh, a solo exhibition at the Art Institute, Chicago (2014); A group exhibition in the German Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale; Indian Highway, a touring group exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, London; Astrup Museum, Oslo (2009); Privacy, a solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2003).

During the opening today, November 6, 2014, Singh will make available the very first of her limited edition of the Book object. She will also individualise them during the opening. The limited edition of the book object, in an edition of 352, costs Rs 9,000 and is only available through her.

It is the same object as you will see on the wall (the book, Museum of Chance, in a specially-made wooden structure to install it on the wall). So in a sense, you can carry part of the exhibition home.

Head to Galerie Max Mueller, Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai, Kalaghoda, Mumbai on Thursday, November 6, at 6.30 pm. The exhibition is on till December 10, 2014.

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Watch

Watch: Films by Satyajit Ray

Today and tomorrow, two Ray classics will be screened at the Max Mueller Bhavan. Don’t miss these films for anything.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

This evening and tomorrow, spend your time wisely – revisit Satyajit Ray’s iconic classics Charulata and Mahanagar. Max Mueller Bhavan is screening both these films in the evening hours.  (See directions and timings below).

Charulata is based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore ‘Nastanirh’ (The broken nest), Satyajit Ray’s exquisite story of a woman’s artistic and romantic yearning takes place in late 19th century, pre-independence India, in the gracious home of a liberal-minded, workaholic newspaper editor and his lonely wife, Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee). When her husband’s poet cousin (Soumitra Chatterjee) comes to stay with them, Charulata finds herself both creatively inspired and dangerously drawn to him. Charulata is a work of subtle textures, a delicate tale of a marriage in jeopardy and a woman taking the first steps toward establishing her own voice. The film was shown at the 1965 Berlin Film Festival and is considered one of Ray’s finest works.

MahanagarMahanagar (in pic on left) is based on Calcutta in the mid 1950s. The film opens with a vignette of a lower middle-class family. Based on a novel by Narbenda Nath Mitra, Satyajit Ray takes a rare foray into social satire with 1963’s The Big City. Anil Chaterjee stars as the typically subjugated wife of an Indian bank official. When the banker loses his job, he orders Anil to find work to make ends meet. The wife subsequently runs the household finances so brilliantly that soon she is in the driver’s seat, in direct opposition to long-established Indian matrimonial custom. This film was seen by some critics as a subtle plea for improving the status of Indian womanhood.

Both films will screen at Bibliothek, Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, at 6.30 pm. Charulata will screen on Friday, October 10 and Mahanagar on Saturday, October 11. Entry is free.

(Pictures courtesy www.livemint.com, ibnlive.com)

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Event

Attend: Photo exhibition of Chitpur Road, Kolkata

21 German photographers got together to document, celebrate Kolkata’s Chitpur Road. Mumbaikars can see the results at Max Mueller Bhavan today.
by Galerie Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai

Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Mumbai will today present ‘Calcutta: Chitpur Road Neighborhoods’, a presentation of photographs by 21 German photographers, under the guidance of Peter Bialobrzeski. This body of work is unique in its methodology as its main aim was to develop a coherent, unified approach towards the subject. It challenged traditional ideas associated with originality and aimed at creating a more universal aesthetic of photography shared by these 21 photographers.  This reversal of thinking was in itself a challenge, and it was absolutely important to overcome it in order for the project to be a success. The participants worked in groups and took turns to direct the shoots. Their aim was to “A good picture a day”.  They worked under the collective name:  ‘A Kolkata Heritage Photo Project’, and are the joint authors of this body of work.

During the 19th century, Kolkata was one of the most economically affluent cities in India under the British, the city elites demonstrated their affluence by building huge palaces in a unique mix of traditional Moghul architecture with classical and Victorian elements. Today, the neighbourhoods around the historical axis of Chitpur road in North Kolkata, still exhibit the remnants of this architecture style. Though decaying as architecture monuments, they still house a vibrant community. The project aimed at capturing these two extremities of the area, without deviating from their set approach.

In 2008, Hatje Cantz published the book ‘Calcutta: Chitpur Road Neighborhoods’, based on this project. Though all the 21 photographers were students of Peter Bialobrzeski at the University of Arts Bremen in 2006, today they are all individual professional photographers. The Kolkata Heritage Project consists of Claudia Aguilar, Johanna Ahlert, Björn Behrens, Jörg Brüggemann, Tine Casper, Franziska von den Driesch, Anja Engelke, Tobias Gratz, Christian Güssow, Dörte Haupt, André Hemstedt, Manja Herrmann, Torben Höke, Britta Isenrath, Joanna Kosowska, Jørgen Kube, Pia Pollmanns, Silke Schmidt, Inga Seevers, Marion Üdema, Sandy Volz.  

The exhibition is a presentation of photographs by twenty one German photographers, under the guidance of Peter Bialobrzeski can be seen from October 1 to 31. The Mumbai presentation is designed by Tanvi Mishra and Kaushik Ramaswamy.

(Picture courtesy Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai)

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