Experiencing Interruptions?

Whose Dreams, Whose City? (2021)

'କାହା ସ୍ଵପ୍ନ, କାହା ସହର? (Whose Dreams, Whose City?)' is a 2021 Odia Independent documentary that takes a flagship state building called 'Krushi Bhawan (Center for Farmers)' sitting at the heart of Bhubaneswar as its focus. It uses that to explore the aspects of artisanship, agriculture, and public art/architecture in a city, things that the building claims to celebrate. In this narrative of the Building and the City, we try to trace the empty spaces, questions, and squabbles between a people and their nation, art and life, tradition and modernity.

  • Abhishek Parija
    Director
    Al Kabirah (2018) | Short film | 28 mins.
  • Abhishek Parija
    Writer
    Al Kabirah (2018) | Short film | 28 mins.
  • Film Society of Bhubaneswar, Minimalist Pictures, Shweta Mohapatra
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Runtime:
    39 minutes 23 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 11, 2021
  • Production Budget:
    970 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Country of Filming:
    India
  • Language:
    English, Odia
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 10th Chennai International Documentary and Short Film Festival, 2022
    Chennai
    India
  • 14th Social Justice Film Festival
    Chennai
    India
  • 16th Signs Film Festival
    Kochi
    India
  • 4th ICA- International Cultural Artifact Film Festival
    Pune
    India
  • 1st Museum Talkies International Film Festival
    Kochi
    India
Director Biography - Abhishek Parija

Abhishek is an independent filmmaker, writer, and translator based in Cuttack, Odisha. A 2020 batch post-graduate in Film and Media Studies from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and has since gathered experience working as an assistant director and editor in Mumbai for a Hindi feature film, and continues to work as a translator in his native language for IIT, Madras. He has previously made one fiction short film, which has been to several national and international film festivals. Apart from a few experimental audio-visual projects, this documentary is his second film. He likes to engage with films both from a theoretical and critical perspective, as much as he does as a director. He does this by writing essays, and scripts that can perhaps one day become films. He also aspires to teach and work in media, ensuring a livelihood that enables one to be in their native place, and make feature films in their own language.

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Director Statement

All my life I have struggled to complete projects, they are more often than not independent. It usually takes pretty long, but I try to keep at it, until the moment a film has had something to say, make its point, complete the argument that had begun with the germ of an idea. This pathology has costed me dearly, and yet, I strive to overcome it, be more efficient while still retaining the strange rhythm and beauty I have seen in the midst of chaos. It is my endeavour as a filmmaker to reveal the method and humanity that lies underneath all the chaos around us, wrapped in the trappings of a ruthless world. In such pursuance, one may perhaps some day express what Bresson once said, "make visible what without you may never have been seen".