Ute Aurand

ute aurand

India

2005 57min 16mm
Verleih: Arsenal Experimental
Hessische Filmförderung

India
2005 57min 16mm
Distribution: Arsenal Experimental

2 / 12

„India“ entstand während drei Reisen nach Puna 2001, 2002 und 2004. Ich kam in ein fremdes Land und fühlte mich überraschend vertraut im Fremden. Ich lief in den Straßen zwischen den Menschen umgeben von ihren Bewegungen und Gesten, den Farben, dem Licht und der Schönheit. Es sind die kleinen Dinge, die meine Aufmerksamkeit weckten, manchmal nur ein kurzer Augenblick, eine Handbewegung, die Farbe eines Saris, ein kleiner Tempel versteckt im Hinterhof. Der Film beginnt mit dem Tag meiner Ankunft.

" (...) Aurands ausdrucksvolle Kameratechnik und Art zu schneiden – einige Szenen sind in der Kamera geschnitten – verleiht den Filmen eine freudige Spontaneität. India entstand auf drei verschiedenen Reisen nach Pune. Lyrisch und skizzenhaft spiegeln Aurands reichhaltige Eindrücke die Vitalität des Lebens, dem sie begegnet ist, wieder. Ihre stakkatohaften Bilder blitzen energiegeladen auf und fügen der Handkamera eine rhythmische Dimension hinzu. Der Film beginnt stumm; nach einigen Minuten hören wir als ersten Ton Vögel. Danach baut sich die Tonebene auf einer großen Auswahl hörbarer Texturen auf: Traditionelle und populärer Musik, Kinderstimmen, rufende Verkäufer und Stadtatmospären wie Fußgänger und Verkehrslärm."  Susan Oxtoby, Wavelengths, TIFF, 2005

Premiere: Toronto International Film Festival 2005

– arsenal experimental


„India“ developed out of my three journeys to Pune in 2001, 2002 and 2004. I arrived in a forgein country, and felt surprisingly familiar in the foreign. There in the streets, walking among the people, surrounded by their movements, their gestures, by the colors, the light, the beauty. Small things awakened my attention, sometimes only a short glimpse, a hand movement, the color of a sari, a temple hidden in a courtyard. It was like a long hot bath that I took there in Pune's streets - something unique and very beautiful.

 "A love for the world is found in Aurand's intimate 16mm colour films. (...) Her expressive camera technique and editing style - which preserves some sequences that were edited in-camera - lends to the joyous spontaneity of the work. (...) Lyrical and sketch-like, Aurand's exuberant impressions of street scenes, performances of traditional dances, and portraits of people she meets mirror the vitality of the life she encounters. Her staccato-length shots flash like bursts of energy, adding a rhythmic dimension to the handheld cinematography. The film begins in silence; after a few minutes, the first sounds we hear are of birds. The soundtrack then builds upon a wide range of aural textures: traditional and popular music, voices of children and shopkeepers, and ambient cityscape sounds such as pedestrians and vehicular traffic. (...)" Susan Oxtoby, programmer of "Wavelengths", Toronto International Film Festival 2005

" (...) Calling the film India is a misnomer, because it in no way pictures all of India, but rather is confined
to images captured in one city. However, by titling the film India, Aurand’s asserts that this is her India, the India she met, grounding and orienting the film squarely from within and through the subjective experience of the filmmaker. (...) The most affecting moments in the film are when Aurand films people and especially children. These are mini portraits, in which we come up onto them, their faces, hands, bodies, from the front, at times the back, quickly and rapidly, moving away and then up close; the sensation is disarming and captivating. One particularly touching and telling moment is when Aurand films a school girl, her hair in plaits, in a blue dress smiling at the camera, and then for a few seconds we see the hem of the girl’s dress, and then her bangle clad hands fidgeting with the dress. In capturing this awkward and endearing gesture by the girl, prompted probably as a reaction to being filmed, Aurand manages to telegraph something of that uncomfortable intimacy that is caused in encountering and beholding another place. India is undeniably an immersive kaleidoscope of personal impressions of the daily quotidian occurrences of a city filtered through the gaze of a filmmaker whose presence is of course felt through the handheld footage, but even more emphatically in the editing. Aurand also plainly introduces herself into the film in scattered shots that punctuate the film, details that intimate her physical presence, from glimpses of an earring to the flicking of
her short hair to self-reflections in her room.(...)" Shanay Jhaveri: As Visible from the Outside Western Filmmakers and India, in: Ausstellungskatalog zu Sulle vie dell’Illuminazione / The Myth of India in Western Culture 1808-2017, Lugano Arte e cultura, 2017

– arsenal experimental