Pad.ma Newsletter I
http://pad.ma/newsletter

Pad.ma’s monthly newsletter contains information about new contributions to the archive (videos and writing), featured videos lists, announcements, Pad.ma projects and events, etc. This month, we bring you eight new video collections (55 new videos), a public call for Pad.ma fellowships, some highlights from the archive, and a new and updated ‘How to use Pad.ma’ guide.

For Pad.ma, this is the beginning of a new phase of content development. It is also in anticipation of a new software framework and interface (expected in summer 2010), which will make working with Pad.ma easier and more rewarding. Meanwhile, we welcome your contributions (video, text or thoughts) to this growing public collection of material.

Pad.ma is an interpretative web-based video archive, which works primarily with footage and not finished films. Pad.ma creates access to material which is easily lost in editing processes, in the filmmaking economy, and in changes of scale brought about by digital technology. Unlike Youtube, the focus here is on annotation, cross-linking, downloading and the reuse of video material for pedagogy, research and reference. For more, see http://pad.ma/about.

>>> What’s new <<<

> Theatre Jam
In October 2009, Maraa, a media collective from Bangalore, did a 31-day marathon of performances in public spaces, in an effort to reclaim them for artistic expression. Theatre workshops, photography exhibitions and poetry readings took place in parks, markets and cafés. An on-going series that begins to document Maraa’s interventions in the city.
http://pad.ma/find?l=L1i

> Politics of Change
Annemie Maes, an artist and researcher from Brussels, started the Politics of Change project when she visited Barefoot College, Tilonia, Rajasthan, in 2008. Maes was struck by the similarity between the bottom-up approach of the solar engineering programme for rural Rajasthani women and her own artistic practice at Okno, an organisation that works on collective technological research projects. Maes has uploaded to Pad.ma her film Mahila, video questionnaires from PoC workshops, and interviews with Rajasthani and African solar engineers, and friends and colleagues from Brussels.
http://pad.ma/find?l=L1e

> People’s Panchayats against Homophobia
Action Plus, a network of 14 organisations working on HIV/AIDS in India, organised People’s Panchayats on stigma and homophobia in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Delhi in early 2009. Forefronted were the voices of survivors and resistors from sexual minority communities. Point of View, Mumbai, documented these panchayats: depositions, testimonies, audience responses, and the jury’s ‘verdict’ at the end. A large and growing collection of voices.
http://pad.ma/find?l=L1j

> Lectures from CSCS, Bangalore
Lectures from the ‘Culture and Democracy’ course at the Centre for the Study of Society and Culture (CSCS), Bangalore. These lectures were recorded in 2007 and invited speakers included Ashish Rajadhyaksha, M. Madhava Prasad, S. V. Srinivas, Sitharamam Kakarala and Vivek Dhareshwar. Welcome to the online, annotation-friendly classroom. Stay logged in for future classes.

Currently published:
M. Madhava Prasad’s ‘Enthusiasm and Indian Politics: Problems in the Analysis of Aural Culture’
http://pad.ma/Vedx0jjp/info
Ashish Rajadhyaksha’s ‘Cinematic Governance’
http://pad.ma/Ve2iazfj/info

> Motornama Roshanara
Rides through the industrial district around Roshanara Road, Delhi. Tours on cycle rickshaws with rickshaw wallahs as narrators and guides. Narratives of automation, pollution, labour and the closure of famed repair industries. All this across a landscape characterised by lost middle-class confidence, new migrants, old machines, bodily risk and emerging eco-politics in the city of Delhi. A project by Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran, as part of 48deg. C, Delhi, 2009.
http://pad.ma/Vhmchrdp/info

> Al Jaar Qabla al Daar (The Neighbour before the house)
A series of video probes into the landscape of East Jerusalem. Shot with a security camera, these videos attempt to overflow the instrumental aspects of surveillance imaging. Looking from one’s home, obsessively or longingly, becomes a way of narrating over the architecture of a city in conflict. A continuing project by CAMP. This is footage from one location in Jerusalem. More from other neighbourhoods coming soon.
http://pad.ma/Vs7c6mni

> Wharfage
Wharfage is another on-going CAMP project, which, in 2009, looked closely at Sharjah port from where a large number of wooden boats or dhows leave for Somalia. This movement of goods and sailors maps out a landscape of new and used objects, labour, Asian and African migration and oversized dhows now being built in Gujarat. Hakimuddin Liliyawala spent time on Sharjah creek, documenting the loading and unloading of the dhows, and wrote over these images. Nida Ghouse and Radhamohini Prasad did a follow-up visit to Jam Salaya, to meet sailor friends they had made in Sharjah.
http://pad.ma/find?l=L1d

> Pad.ma Meta
On February 16, 2009, Pad.ma was launched as a public website. We had a day-long event in which people who have been engaging with Pad.ma, made presentations about their use of the archive. Presenters included Sanjay Kak, Agaaz, Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, Ayisha Abraham, Sadanand Menon, and Priya Sen, among others. This collection has videos of these presentations and documentation of other Pad.ma events. http://pad.ma/find?l=L1m
For a report on the Pad.ma 2009 event, see: http://camputer.org/event.php?this=padma09&tab=optBtn2

>>> Pad.ma Highlight <<<

Pad.ma’s commitment to making video footage publicly available has motivated us to recirculate material under fair use. Contributors have uploaded clips from Hindi films to Pad.ma and more importantly, annotated them critically. This has created a innovative space for film studies on the web, where ideas and timelines can come together. Some examples:

> Queering Bollywood
A selection of some coded queer moments in seemingly mainstream and heteronormative Indian films. A collection of queer readings of such moments. And a database of video clips, film titles and articles on queer representations in cinema. This video selection, put together by Namita Malhotra, has clips from films like Sholay, Sadak, Utsav, Silsila and Mera Naam Joker. User contributions to this database are invited. Write to pad.ma@pad.ma
http://pad.ma/find?l=L10

> Cinematic Cities and Citizenship
Cinema constructs national consciousness: citizens and denizens, centres and margins. Cinema archives the urban: planners and gangsters, ambivalent modernities and urban villages. And cinema opens a virtual window to the world. All for eight rupees – at least it did till some time ago. A virtual tour of the city and the citizen in cinema with Lawrence Liang.
http://pad.ma/find?l=L1h

> The sex worker in Bollywood

These clips from films like Amar Prem, Umrao Jaan and Mandi as well as the more recent Julie, Chameli and Sadak, explore the popular concern with and presence of the sex worker in many Hindi film genres (commercial, art house, historical and B-grade). The depictions traverse a range of characters, including gharwalis and pimps to name a few.
http://pad.ma/find?l=L1q

>>> Announcements <<<

> Fellowships

Pad.ma invites applications for fellowships from individuals and organisations interested in
> contributing footage from a film or research project
> annotating and researching material already in Pad.ma
> experimenting with new ways of interpreting and using videos in the archive
Fellows will be offered honorariums and interested persons can write to pad.ma@pad.ma

> Pad.ma @ Home Works , Beirut

Pad.ma will conduct a two week workshop and day-long colloquium at Home Works V in Beirut, Lebanon, from April 12-25, 2010. Titled ‘Don’t Wait for the Archive: Archiving practices and futures of the image’, this workshop/colloquium seeks to discuss the archive as neither a fixed concept nor as unbounded potential, but as a concrete set of negotiations, costs, transactions, tools and imaginations that constitute it. A key question will be: Is there something, in the density of our contemporary experiences in Bombay, Bangalore, Beirut or on the internet, that can lead to a shared theory of the archive, which goes beyond its dominant canons? For more, see http://www.ashkalalwan.org/

> Technical Tips for Pad.ma
Feeling daunted by the Pad.ma interface? Can’t figure out how to browse, search, upload or download videos, transcribe or annotate? Or why you just can’t open Pad.ma in Internet Explorer? Fret not. The up-to-date ‘How to Use Pad.ma’ guide is here: http://wiki.pad.ma/wiki/HowTo

This newsletter was compiled by Pad.ma’s Content Coordinator, Subuhi Jiwani, with the support of Zinnia Ambaripadwala, Pad.ma's Technical Coordinator. Send your feedback and comments to subuhi@pad.ma or pad.ma@pad.ma

The Pad.ma project was initiated in 2008 by Oil21 from Berlin, the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore, Majlis, Point of View and Chitrakarkhana/CAMP, Mumbai.

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