Projects
Airborne
Shaunak SEN
- India
- 80min
- mov
- color
Synopsis
“The story of Delhi’s apocalyptic air is told through an unlikely figure – the black kite, and its human entanglements.”
Review
My first film explored Delhi through the lens of sleep. By focusing on the ‘sleep mafia’ of Delhi (these are people who control who sleeps where, for how long and what quality of sleep - for the homeless), I leveraged sleep as a political, philosophical, and aesthetic category through which to consider the city. As a method, I am deeply interested in looking at the everyday banal phenomenon that usually occupies the fringes of our vision - as objects of rigorous study. Through this film, I want to enchant the sky. I want audiences to instinctively look up – to think of the sky and the birds in it as novel wonderfully alien things. At the most nascent level, my interest in the ‘more-than-human’ began during a fellowship at Cambridge University last year, under a research project called ‘Urban Ecologies’. This was/is a cutting-edge project studying urban ecology across different cities in India. I began developing a deep interest in the behavioral and evolutionary changes in animals in Delhi, prompted by air pollution. My interest is not in making conventional ‘nature-based’ programming, nor an ‘animal/wildlife’ documentary. My focus is not limited to the life of the human protagonists neither the avian ones, but to map broader changes that are happening to the city itself. The city itself - replete with the many human-animal ensembles in it – features in the film as a character.
Director
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Shaunak SEN
Credit
- Producer아만 만 Aman MANN