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Delhi at Eleven

Produced by: David MacDougall

82 min. Color. 2013.

Captioned: Yes

Catalog #: 0192

Price: $295.00

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Product Description

This stunningly original and thought-provoking documentary presents the work of four young filmmakers living in New Delhi, India. Their films offer a unique and intimate perspective on Indian family and working life.

From March to May 2012 the four — two boys and two girls — took part in a video workshop at the CIE Experimental Basic School, a government primary school. Each of the filmmakers was eleven years old and a resident of north Delhi at the time of filming, and none had made a film before.

The workshop was coordinated by renowned ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall as part of the “Childhood and Modernity” Project, with the support of the Australian National University and the Australian Research Council. The four films are as follows:

My Lovely General Store by Ravi Shivhare (14:20)

In this film Ravi explores the day-to-day workings of a small general store near where he lives, where his uncle has a part-time job. The store stocks a wide range of items and caters largely to local customers. Ravi was interested in researching everything about the store with his camera — what the owners were like, the relations between them and the customers, what sort of customers came to the store, what sorts of things were bought, how the store maintained its stock, how they made deliveries, and how they handled the money involved.

The film focuses in part on a young delivery boy not much older than Ravi. The result is an up-close and highly personal portrait of the store, from dawn to dusk. And if you look carefully, half-way through the film you will see Ravi serving customers, shot from a camera that he has mounted on a tripod to film himself.

Why Not a Girl? by Anshu Singh (15:46)

In this film Anshu documents the oppression that many girls experience in their family life and the favoritism that is shown to boys. The result is a powerful indictment of gender relations in Indian society, in which girls shoulder much of the daily work in the home while boys are free to play and do as they wish. These conditions lead to depression, poor health, and poor educational opportunities for girls, affecting their long-term chances in life. At the end of the film, Anshu is found alone on the roof of her house, speaking with great intimacy to her camera about the injustice she has uncovered.

My Funny Film by Aniket Kumar Kashyap (15:48)

Aniket’s film is a high-spirited, kaleidoscopic study of his friends and family, exploring the many diverse aspects of their lives, from play to work, cooking, love, and music. The film contains song-and-dance routines, based on Bollywood movies, as well as fights, meals, piecework done in the home, and the impact of television and cell phones on daily life. The film provides a vivid portrait of Aniket’s immediate surroundings, and more detail about the domestic life of ordinary Indians than most films made by adults. The film includes the arrival of a new member of the family, much to Aniket’s fascination. It closes with a meditative scene of Aniket singing to himself some of the latest popular songs he has learned.

Children at Home by Shikha Kumar Dalsus (28:44)

Shikha’s original intention was to make a film examining what children do when adults are not present, but this evolved into a much wider study of children’s lives at home, focusing on her younger brother and a girl a little older than herself. The film offers an inside view of the daily rituals, work, study, and play of children in an extended family, their relations with adults, and the physical spaces in which they live. Like the other films in this series, this is a child’s acute view of the world, with a special perspective on the lives of other children.

Poignant, profound, and powerful, there is really no other documentary quite like Delhi at Eleven. It will inspire a wealth of thought and discussion in a wide array of courses in Asian and Indian studies, cultural anthropology, ethnographic film, and many other disciplines. It was produced by David MacDougall and is in Hindi, with English subtitles.

Reviews

“This is a wonderful collection of films that has relevance to anthropology, and especially to an anthropology that both privileges the perspectives of children and recognises the important insights that the child-as-researcher can bring to our understanding of the world. Delhi at Eleven can be seen, at one level, as a kind of culmination of the long campaign by anthropologists for recognition of the unique contribution and understanding that children can bring to the anthropological record…. What this collection shows us is how the use of film by children themselves can be an incredibly powerful tool in both ´getting at´ and more accurately representing children´s perspectives and understandings. Each of these films offers a unique, close-up account of the child-filmmaker´s life, precisely the kind of understanding that anthropologists in general, and anthropologists of children in particular, strive for but sometimes struggle to obtain and represent.” — Dr. Peggy Froerer, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, and specialist in the anthropology of childhood, Brunel University (UK)

“I found myself quickly transported into the life world of these young filmmakers — from the street, to a day in the life of a small shop, to the everyday dynamics of school, to the intimacies of domestic life, to the injuries of gender and the joys of play. [The children´s] use of the camera… is part of what communicates the sense of privilege to the viewer who is allowed to share the results of that process, the fleeting reminder of our own youthful encounters with the world. In the end, what I found most moving about these films was their confident sense of a reality composed of the rich ephemeralities that are such a potent dimension of childhood experience.” — Faye Ginsburg, Professor of Anthropology and Director, Center for Media, Culture and History, New York University

“For two decades now, David MacDougall´s films on children in India have explored one of anthropology´s central concerns: how do we represent difference and different ways of inhabiting the world, without flattening others to refracted mirror images of our own selves? Delhi at Eleven develops MacDougall´s visual experimentation with this problem in a fascinating new direction…. [His] gesture of handing over the camera in Delhi at Eleven seems almost intuitive. If children are indeed one of anthropology´s last tribes, these films take part in a collective movement in ethnographic film to finally disavow any lingering hierarchies about who might represent and who might be represented. What is particular to Delhi at Eleven is its openness to a childish curiosity with looking, telling and documenting.” — Dr. Dwaipayan Banerjee, anthropologist and former student at the Center for Media, Culture and History, New York University

“The set of four short films that comprise Delhi at Eleven are a fascinating account of life in the Indian capital from a child´s perspective. These portraits of Delhi life give us realistic, almost ethnographic purview into the formations of social relations and structures, as defined by class and gender. They offer a unique prism into life in the capital, from the seemingly mundane economic activities found in the streets and neighbourhoods of Delhi, to the ongoing concerns that shape the lives, fears and aspirations of young children.” — Assa Doron, Associate Professor of Anthropology and ARC Future Fellow, School of Culture, History and Language, The Australian National University

“Why are children and young people so often overlooked as filmmakers? There are plenty of films about children, but fully-fledged films by or with children are extremely hard to find. Hence, Delhi at Eleven is to be welcomed. What struck me immediately was the level of energy that animated the work. Perhaps, more surprising, were the different filmmaking personalities that unfolded within the series…. For me, the inherent interest — indeed, pleasure — of the films lies in their quirks and idiosyncrasies, in how they tell us something particular about the filmmakers and how they understand their place in the world.” — Anna Grimshaw, Professor, The Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University, author of The Ethnographer´s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology

“The project´s approach and its use of video cameras help to reveal a parallel world of knowledge possessed by young children…. What we see is the result of full immersion, playfulness and disciplined learning…. The four filmmakers each have their own gaze, their own point of view, their own interests and ways of making images…. It is the child´s achievement in being accepted as a legitimate observer, capable of expressing what they see, that gives them the ability to throw a fresh light on things that are felt to be already fully known.” — Dr. Rossella Ragazzi, visual anthropologist and Associate Professor at University of Tromsø Museum, University of Tromsø, Norway

Awards

Royal Anthropological Institute International Ethnographic Film Festival honoree
Childhoods in South Asia Conference 2013 honoree
Regard Bleu #9 (Zurich, 2013) honoree