Ritwika Pal

Ritwika Pal is an actor, writer and filmmaker based in Kolkota. She is the founder and editor of Curry Projects, an online zine. Through this project, she intends to explore love in the age of the internet.

“01101001  01101001  01101001  01101001  01101001  01101001  01101001  01101001  01101001  01101001” is ‘I love you’ in binary code. Computers, phones and the internet can only understand the language of binaries - ones and zeroes, ons and offs. If you search for #Love on Instagram you get 1,905, 707, 573 results. Google gives you 14,81, 00,00,000 results in 0.81 seconds. That’s fourteen billion answers to the one-word enquiry of love,” says Ritwika in her proposal. Through this grant, Ritwika wants to make a short film titled Love In The Time Of Internet which is about love, the internet, as also about love in the digital age. The film will be part fact, part fiction, based on found images, still photographs, texts, original artworks, conversations, dreams and fantasies of users of the online medium. Ritwika will also explore the algorithms of the interactive spaces of the internet and its effect on relationships, particularly couples in relationships. She will draw on the works of people like Eric Fromm, Alain Badiou and Bell Hooks and from famous couples like Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Lee Miller and Man Ray, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, to name a few.

The film will use a variety of formats in an amalgamation of media ranging from drawings, original artworks, still portraits, animation, voice-overs, conversations, and found footage. It will be a collage of art, animation and videography.

The grantee’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be the film, together with documentation of the process. 

This grant is made possible under the special initiative 25x25, with support from lead donor Kshirsagar-Apte Foundation, and philanthropy partners, Titan Company Limited, Priya Paul, and Sethu Vaidyanathan.