Kalalabad Vol. 1

DVD, color, sound, 50 min
scans not available
NEVER BEEN TO MERLE, 5 min. - Born in Bombay in 1911 Estelle 'Queenie' O'Brien Thompson became Merle Oberon and became a star – she believed she could be all sorts of people – made to shine – but ...
Rental format: DVD NTSC

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NEVER BEEN TO MERLE, 5 min. - Born in Bombay in 1911 Estelle 'Queenie' O'Brien Thompson became Merle Oberon and became a star – she believed she could be all sorts of people – made to shine – but as that other, more Shakespearean Oberon once said " The starry welkin cover thou anon/ With drooping fog as black as Acheron." A musical tribute to the many shades of passing.
NAVY BLUE OF INDIA, 4 min. - A phone call gone astray between continents, chromatics, cinemas and soundtracks – when the theme from 'Charade' is the theme from 'Gumnaam,' when you are only trying to call your aunt and getting all kinds of domestic drama in response, when as Mrs. Diane Vreeland said "Navy Blue is Pink of India."
ANGLOPHOBIA, 9 min. - "No one knows for sure how many homosexuals there are in Great Britain, but the popular estimate is one in twenty persons. It's true the French call sodomy le Vice Anglais, but without reliable statistics we can always dismiss that as ANGLOPHOBIA" The French have their version of Anglophobia, the colonials theirs has his – but with commentary provided by the hippies from 'Hari Ram Hari Krishna' and a train ride through Masterpiece Theater one has to wonder if phobia isn't perhaps the souring side of love.
ECONOMIST DESCENDING A STAIRCASE, 6 min. - After: Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) by Marcel Duchamp (and Duchampiana by Shigeko Kubota). Specificity, biography, women with clothes and jobs and history all meet the Duchampian project on that oft-trod staircase.
PASOLINI SUPRABATHAM, 15 min. - The sub-proletariat meets the subaltern in a collision of semi-urban spaces, queer spectatorship, boys dancing together and neo-realism on video with vocals by Anna Magnani and M.S.Subbalakshmi.
HINDU PUSHUPS, 5 min. - You're rusty - the old whore is rusty...and the only cure is a strict course of Hindu Pushups (as serenaded by Megan Mulally) till you look good enough to phone-camera in your own self portrait.
HINDUSTAN X, 7 min. - A tenth anniversary remix of the 1995 Video 'Hindustan' –the first queer South Asian Music Video – more melodic thought on travel, foreignness and romance.
ELECTROCLASH WOJNAROWICZ, 5 min. - A retro-synth re-visitation of David Wojnarowicz, with particular attention to the Rimbaud in New York series and '"When I Put My HandsOn Your Body," – fusing re-hash with mash-up, video with photography, 80s nostalgia with the actual stark poetic stakes of the decade.
EAST VILLAGE MAXI MANTRA, 3 min. - "Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, the hymn in English will now be performed at the beginning of the resumption of the music after the intermission" The sun also rises over downtown New York and Bombay – to a very contemporary 'keeping up with the Jones' (Norah) Gayatri Mantra – with dance by Parijat Desai.

Jud Yalkut