In 2003, filmmaker Shai Heredia organised the first edition of Experimenta, a festival dedicated to “all forms of experimentation with the moving image, from celluloid to digital and documentary to fiction”. Held in Mumbai annually and then biennially, Experimenta soon became a vital platform for filmmakers and cinephiles keen on testing the known boundaries of the cinematic language.
After Heredia moved to Bengaluru – she teaches Experimental Film and Contemporary Art Practice at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology in the city – Experimenta moved with her too. This year’s edition will take place from December 4 to December 8 at the Goethe Institut.
The 12th chapter has 28 films from Asia and South East Asia. Among the titles are Mahdi Awada’s Notes on Sanity, JT Trinidad’s The River That Never Ends, Shambhavi Kaul’s Slow Shift, Gavati Wad’s O Seeker, Utsa Hazarika’s Round Two, Tenzin Phuntsog’s Pure Land and Lovers’ Wind by Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour and Ryan Ferko.
Three films reflect the Bengaluru setting: Babu Eshwar Prasad’s Dear Chalam, Hansa Thapliyal’s Kyaa Hai Yeh Samjhauta and Mahesh B’s Babasaheb in Bengaluru. Heredia and Erika Balsom have curated a collection of feminist nonfiction from the Global South, titled One Way or Another. The films include Grupo Chaski’s Miss Universe in Peru (1982), Simone Fattal’s Autoportrait (1972/2012), Nalini Malani’s Onanism (1969), and Gloria Camiruaga’s Popsicles (1982-84).
The festival will close with Prem Kapoor’s Badnam Basti (1971). The Hindi-language film is thought to be the first Indian production with gay characters.
Based on the novel of the same name by Kamleshwar, Badnam Basti (Tainted Alleys) explores the intersecting lives of a truck driver, the woman he loves, and his helper. Sarnam (Nitin Sethi) is enamored with Bansuri (Nandita Thakur) but seeks comfort in the company of Shivraj (Amar Kakkad) when Bansuri marries someone else.
The non-linear film, shot by RM Rao, is uncompromisingly avant-garde. Badnam Basti has an internal logic and a fragmented narrative style that permeates into the portrayal of the characters. Sarnam and Bansuri have a bond that defies convention. Sarnam’s relationship with Shivraj is alluded to be sexual.
After being out of circulation for years, Badnam Basti was rediscovered in 2019. It has since been restored by Arsenal Institute of Film and Video Art in Berlin and the National Film Development Corporation and Film Heritage Foundation in India. “As the film re-emerges, it invites us to view it through the lens of today, opening doors to conversations about representation, silenced narratives, and the evolving nature of identity,” states a press note for Experimenta 2024.
Alongside steering Experimenta, Shai Heredia has co-directed with Shumona Goel the films I Am Micro (2012) and An Old Dog’s Diary (2015). Heredia is also a co-curator of Forum Expanded at the Berlin Film Festival. In an interview, Heredia spoke to Scroll about the experimental film landscape in India, the re-emergence of Badnam Basti, and the connection between Experimenta and All We Imagine as Light director Payal Kapadia. Here are edited excerpts.
What is the curatorial vision of Experimenta 2024?
We held the 2020 edition in 2023 because of Covid. I felt that the festival needed to change its format – it was falling into the trap of having sections and being like any other festival.
I wanted to return to a full programme of political films. The idea was to talk about issues and conflicts and how filmmakers were responding to their contexts.
Last year, we showed archival and contemporary films and closed with Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing. This year, the programme has shifted ever so slightly. We are focused on the Global South, on films from Asia and Southeast Asia. We are looking at feminist nonfiction, mainly historical work between the 1960s and the 1990s.
We’re not necessarily trying anymore to ask, is a film experimental enough? There is a curatorial framework around film forms rooted in politics, craft that is addressing larger movements or responding to cultural and political moments, such as the Middle East. The range of work addresses the diversity of films being made.
What has changed in the landscape in experimental film since the first edition from 2003?
Experimenta has always been about that nebulous space in between. It’s about addressing work that falls between the cracks without saying that it is fiction or documentary.
I’ve never actually had a definition for experimental film. I have always chosen to curate based on whatever I have received, and have looked at the practices out there.
This year’s call was for work made between 2017 and now. The number of Indian practitioners making this kind of work, which doesn’t fit straight-up into a genre format, has increased exponentially. We had about 150-200 entries from India and for the most part, the work was really good.
These filmmakers are very exposed to looking at lots of other work. Access has changed in terms of how much people are able to see. People are learning filmmaking on their own or through other spaces, which is not that one institution teaching you what film is. Even with things like Instagram Reels, there is a relationship to the moving image that has become quite interesting.
Also, people feel that there is a platform for anything. There are multiple online spaces, film clubs and associations. The streaming context during Covid opened the entire space up.
How does Experimenta measure up against conventional festivals that operate on a larger scale?
The big film festival exists to feed a market and feed the rest of the festival circuit. There is another context, of filmmaking communities that are not so much about existing in any sort of mainstream place.
I started Experimenta for the same reasons that it still exists – I wanted access to work I was interested in, and I wanted to share it with a community. I’ve never been interested in being this massive festival. I’m really interested in connecting with my community. The idea is a collective experience, which is why we never did events during Covid.
Experimenta has never been about scale. There’s no film market or anything. We give out an Adolfas Mekas Award for “cinematic madness, risk taking and the making of spirited mistakes”.
Scale messes things up – you lose sight of what you are there for. Frankly, scale is a very male thing too. I would rather have something focused and interesting than deal with being big.
How do you manage to fund such an event?
It’s quite tough to do and tough to maintain the spirit. The money is very limited and almost non-existent. If I get some extra money, I can publish a full colour brochure.
I have one steady supporter, the Goethe Institut. We have been building up a regular audience in Bangalore over the years. Between 800 and 1,000 people come in over five days.
It’s fascinating how important this festival is for younger filmmakers who come here not to find a sponsor or distributor, but to connect with communities. Somebody like Payal Kapadia has come through the experimental film context. She is fully known in this world. She isn’t catering to anybody but is making formal choices she is comfortable with, and that is reassuring.
The term experimental is a way of othering filmmakers, but in that othering, there is also strength.
The closing title is Prem Kapoor’s Badnam Basti, which was out of circulation for decades. The film isn’t even mentioned in the otherwise comprehensive Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema.
It goes back to my point about othering. The film wasn’t actually that obscure in its time. It was shown at a programme called The Other Cinema in Europe in 1971. The other films included Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti and S Sukhdev’s Nine Months to Freedom.
Badnaam Basti was selected for the Venice Film Festival, but Prem Kapoor wasn’t happy with Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s edit, so it didn’t eventually go to Venice. What is interesting is why it got relegated to obscurity.
The film is very much about outsiders. It’s a super-transgressive film on many levels – formally but also in terms of its content.
The relationships are queer in the sense that they are critical of a heteronormative narrative. There are these weird dynamics between characters. The film is fragmented and has anarchic energy.
Perhaps at the time, the film didn’t formally work because it was all over the place. Also, we were in a pre-Section 377 world, and you clearly could not go there [in terms of queer characters].
I really believe that there is a reason why a film develops value over time. The rediscovery was not random – a collective energy brought the film back.
