We are pleased to bring you IFA news from the past three months. Since we have, over the years, funded dozens of research and documentation projects, the subject of archives is one which naturally interests us a great deal. Read below about two recent archiving-related interventions. Meanwhile, several IFA projects (involving performance, film, photography and installation art) have been in the public eye. Among them is Saba Dewan’s just-completed film on tawaifs called The Other Song. Scroll down to read an interview with Saba...
KM Madhusudhan is making a 16mm fictional film on the Indian magic lantern or Shambharik Kharolika, a late 19th century innovation involving the use of painted images on glass to create cinema projections. Film, television and theatre actor, Jyoti Dogra created The Doorway, an exploration of real and imagined stories in the tradition of Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory. Meanwhile, filmmaker Vaibhav Abnave is exploring the history of experimentation in Marathi theatre with special reference to playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar...
Bangalore's Sanket Trust recently received an IFA grant to organise a one-day "Teacher Training Initiative (TTI)" and a one-day symposium on "Theatre Pedagogy for Children" (August 31 and September 04). Both were intended to spark a long term engagement of teachers with education through theatre. Ranga Shankara, the theatre initiative of the Sanket Trust, has a broad-based Theatre for Children programme called AHA! and these two one-day activities formed part of Ranga Shankara's first ever theatre festival exclusively for children...
"A School Without the Arts is Like a Place Without Water"
A two-day conference jointly organised by GoetheInstitut/Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore and IFA—Arts Education: Contexts, Concepts and Practices in Schools—brought together a fascinating range of perspectives drawn from educational policy, classroom practices and artist-led interventions. Held over December 11 and 12 in Bangalore, the conference was aimed at showcasing and extending IFA's "Kali-Kalisu" initiative, a series of Goethe-Institut-supported arts pedagogy training workshops which have brought arts education to over 500 teachers in rural and small-town Karnataka...
