question. create. deliberate.
festivals | gFest Delhi
Venue: Studio Safdar, Shadipur, Delhi
Date: 1-16 April 2023
reFrame's first ever festival that celebrated 21 works created under the genDeralities fellowships. over 16 days, the festival saw countless conversations contemplating gender and the arts, the personal and the political. organised in collaboration with studio safdar. the festival was packed with film screenings, q&a with filmmakers, live performances, and panel discussions with subject experts, activists and artists
the festival takes shape
LIVE performances. Mixed media installations. Screenings of a feature film, documentaries, experimental films, as well as performance videos. Digital works on interactive tablets.
ENGAGING conversations with artists and artist collectives.
PANEL discussions with seasoned, insightful resource persons.
WORKSHOPS with NGO and community based workers, students, teachers and trainee teachers. Interactions with children and adults from the neighbourhood.
gFest at Studio Safdar brought a whole spectrum of issues together with a focus on how they intersect, shape and are shaped by questions of gender.
featured artists
Aakash Chhabra | Abhishek Anicca | Arul Kani | Debarati Sarkar | Dhaarchidi Collective | Divya Sachar | Ektara Collective | Ipsita Choudhury | Jyotsna Siddharth | Manjari K | Mehdi Jahan | Muntaha Amin | Najrin Islam | Natasha Chandhock | Reya Ahmed | Rumi Harish | Samata Kala Manch | Shobhana Kumari | The Chinky Homo Project | The Storyboard Collective | Urvija Priyadarshini
unpacking gender | works that challenge power and privilege of the binary world.
Ektara Collective’s feature film,
Ek Jagah Apni [A place of my own].
You have no idea how much your love, appreciation and understanding means. There are obstacles at every turn for people like us. So the opportunity to tell our own stories meant a lot. But even shooting this film in public places wasn't easy. We had to turn a deaf ear to the comments we would get, and just focus on the work. Real acting that was!
Muskaan, actor.
talking disability & gender | works that explore the struggles of the body and mind.
Divya Sachar’s experimental film, Searcher.
The very act of making the film was therapeutic for me. I was addressing my schizophrenia through the camera and by working in the editing suite. This process, along with medicines and the blessings of my guru, helped me make peace with my grandmother's suffering and illness as well.
Divya Sachar
deep dives into gender & identity | works on gender, caste, race and religion.
Arul Kani’s podcast series,
Identity Matters.
Whenever caste is discussed it is either through the lens of violence or reservations, so there’s always a particular visuality which I wanted to get away from. People like us speak about it all the time. It could be about our caste, your caste or somebody’s else’s caste. These conversations are everywhere, all the time. And that's what I wanted to capture in the podcast series.
Arul Kani
gender & labour | art that speaks to the vulnerabilities and invisibilities of what women do.
Dhaarchidi Collective’s mixed media installation, Pahadaan da Laan.
"Aakhir tu kya hi kamaandi?" or "After all, what do you earn?" This is what a woman is asked at the end of a exhausting day of work. Because no one considers any of the labour being done by women as valuable. Sadly, that often includes the women themselves. But in truth, their bodies are marked with signs of their labour - physical and emotional.
Anjali at gFest
gender & the political | works that confront the larger forces around us.
Muntaha Amin's documentary film, Siege in the Air.
When you are living in that reality, in that moment, you just want to normalize it. When I went for my undergrad at Delhi University, I was getting introduced to all kinds of theories and ideas about looking at the world. That was the moment I started looking at our reality critically and I thought, this is not normal, this is unprecedented.
Muntaha Amin
