Private Project

Kashi Labh

The film explores the way in which Hindu pilgrims and their families stage a distinctive politics-of-care, while they anticipate and create the possibility of Moksha for their dying relative in Varanasi, India's holy city. This research examines audiovisual ethnography as it facilitates a performative space that allowed me and my interlocutor Shiv to navigate the holy city and improvise different possibilities for his mother’s Moksha during his ten-day stay in Varanasi.

  • Rajat Nayyar
    Director
  • Rajat Nayyar
    Writer
  • Espírito Kashi
    Producer
  • Shiv Dhawan
    Key Cast
  • Kersti Uibo
    Film Supervisor
  • Dr. Vijay Choubey
    Music
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    45 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    May 27, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    3,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Country of Filming:
    India
  • Language:
    Hindi
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital 4K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes
  • Riga Pasaules Film Festival - Kino Bize
    Riga
    Latvia
    April 27, 2019
  • RAI Film Festival
    Bristol
    United Kingdom
    March 28, 2019
    UK Premiere
  • Sjón Film Festival
    Copenhagen
    Denmark
    March 8, 2019
    Denmark Premiere
  • Marburg International Ethnographic Film Festival
    Marburg
    Germany
    November 3, 2018
    German Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Regard Bleu International Ethnographic Film Festival
    Zurich
    Switzerland
    October 20, 2018
    Swiss Premiere
    Official Selection
  • 7th Days of Ethnographic Cinema Film Festival
    Moscow
    Russian Federation
    September 25, 2018
  • 9th Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival
    Delhi
    India
    April 30, 2019
  • 7th Congress of the Portuguese Anthropological Association
    Lisbon
    Portugal
    June 4, 2019
Director Biography - Rajat Nayyar

Rajat Nayyar is a visual anthropologist and currently a PhD researcher at Department of Theatre, York University. He works as a co-editor of the Performance Ethnography section at the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE). His research interests are directed towards verbal performative traditions, everyday forms of resistance, collaborative fiction filmmaking, anthropology of dying, death and politics of care.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

During the ten days of research with Shiv's family, I realized that Moksha is an embodied knowledge of care that is transmitted through generations in the form of religious stories, and is grounded in the everyday adjustments of making it a possibility (as future), rather than a philosophical argument (Jackson 2014). During our walks with the camera through the labyrinth-like network of narrow streets, we began to improvise small, daily projects. These projects represented Shiv’s distinctive politics-of-care, for they heightened the possibility of his mother’s Moksha. In attending to such unintended imaginaries (Kazubowski-Houston 2017, 115), the camera attuned us to the affective and embodied dimensions of Shiv’s politics-of-care. This approach to audio-visual ethnography further allowed Shiv to take an active role in setting the direction of the film and impacting his family’s future. Based on our critical intervention within the everyday performances of the possible, I re-consider the anticipatory and the creative potential our research, and how it facilitates collaboration and reflexive creation of ethnographic knowledge.