In collaboration with the Cinema Collective
Kho Ki Pa Lu/ Up Down & Sideways
In Chokri (a Naga language) with English Subtitles (83 mins)
Close to the India-Myanmar border is the village of Phek in Nagaland. Around 5,000 people live there, almost all of whom cultivate rice for their own consumption. As they work in co-operative groups – preparing the terraced fields, planting saplings or harvesting the grain and carrying it up impossibly steep slopes – the rice cultivators of Phek sing. The seasons change, and so does the music, transforming the mundane into the hypnotic. The love that they sing of is also a metaphor for the need for the other – the friend, the family, the community, to build a polyphony of voices. Stories of love, stories of the field, stories of song, stories in song. Up Down & Sideways is a musical portrait of a community and their memories of love and loss. It is the first feature film from the u-ra-mi-li project, a larger body of work that looks at the connections between music and labour.
Directed by Anushka Meenakshi & Iswar Srikumar
Admission on a first-come-first-served basis. NCPA members will get preferential seating till 6.20 pm.