Favourites from 5th Paper-Made Art Biennial

"Papermade" is the biennial art exhibition focusing on paper-art held in Schio (VI) in the Veneto region of Italy. The 5th Papermade is going on now and can be visited on weekends and holidays till the end of February 2022. I love the idea of paper-art and I think that this years' exhibition has managed to bring together some great art works and is probably the best Papermade Art Exhibition so far! The exhibition is being held at Palazzo Fogazzaro in the city centre of Schio.

Different Italian cities hold art biennales, the most famous being the Venice biennale. Other art biennales are held in Florence, Milan, Rome and Salerno. Compared to those bigger cities, the biennale of Schio is smaller with about 80-100 art works but it is also unique in this region as it focuses only on paper art. Some other well known Paper-Art Biennales include the ones in Lucca (Italy), Shanghai (China) and Nantou (Taiwan).

I had started this post thinking that I will choose my favourite 10 art-works but there were just too many that I did not wish to leave out of this post. So in the end, I have chosen 20 (but I could have easily added another 10). Therefore, it is a long post with a lot of pictures. If you are one of the artists in the exhibition and you wish to get some pictures of your artwork, do let me know and I will be happy to send them to you.

Let me start with the work which is shown above. It combines drawing with collage, is titled "Girls eat the air with silver spoon" and is by an American artist of Cuban origins called Lisyanet Rodriguez. She wants her art to be "beautiful and disturbing simultaneously" and uses old dresses to cover "creatures that have several deformities, mutations, and hybrid bodies". Looking at Lisyanet's work in this exhibition, I thought that it beautifully captures the pressure on people, especially on women, to have thin bodies. Perhaps the title of the work also refers to other food-fads, ranging from keto and paleo-diets to vegans and no-glutens - I am not sure. This work was used on the banner of the Biennale.

I want to start my favourite artworks list with Anita Gratzer from Austria, who has an installation with 8 sculptures of paper-clothes in the central hall of Palazzo Fogazzaro. It is a very striking installation, using the papers of old texts to represent people and events. The image below shows the close-up of the sculpture called "Mantis Shogakai" and has a worship dress made from an old text about Kabuki and the inventory records of a sake factory in Onishi on the Japanese Washi-Paper. It represents the art and calligraphy gatherings of artists which were called Shagokai. She made this work when she was in Mantta in Finland. Thus, the title of the art-work bring together the spirit of Mantta and a 19th century Japanese tradition in this sculpture. Anita defines them as "wearables" which "function as mobile shelters of the fragile memory."

Sculptures by Carlo Pasini & Thomas Ashley

Papermade-5 has a few works of Thomas Ashley. In one exhibit his work on Linocut print forms the background to a very striking wounded tiger in cardboard and mixed materials by Carlo Pasini, which occupies a place of pride in the entrance hall of the exhibition. Pasini's tiger lies with its tummy up, in a vulnerable position, over an intricate linocut by Ashley. The tiger has pieces of glass embedded in its body as if it had tried to jump over a wall lined with broken glass, and thus had got hurt. It also has numerous needles sticking out of its body, as if someone wanted to use it as a kind of voodoo doll. The tiger sculpture is titled "Scoprimi tutta" (Discover or uncover me completely) but I prefer to call it The Wounded Tiger. For me it symbolised the climate and the nature crisis.

Paper Saloon by Alicia Olaya Rodriguez

The art-work by the Spanish artist is a big installation composed of different pieces of furniture, lamp, bracelets and the bust of a woman covered with curly hair, all made from folded paper. This installation is spread over 2 rooms in the exhibition. It is striking because it represents a huge amount of work and an inventive use of paper for the expression of beauty. It seems to show the riches of a noble family and the use of the paper seems to represent the transient nature of fame and wealth.

Lost Keys of Claudio Onorato

Italian artist Claudio Onorato, based in Milan, also has a few very complex works in the exhibition. The image below shows part of an art work called "I have lost the keys to my house". It is made from black-paper with pencil design and a humungous amount of detailed paper-cutting. I think that it is an example of taking paper-cutting as an extreme art-form. The impact is very striking and fascinating. Claudio expresses his resistance to inequalities and cruelties in the world through creating works in which empty spaces, air and light are as important as the paper.

Wallflowers by Linda Rademan

Linda Rademan is an artist from South Africa. Her art work in Papermade-5 is very special - it is made on a large number of tea-bags, which have been sewn together to form the surface on which she has used dry-point and embroidery to show old images of girls. The image below has a close-up of a part of this work. She is based in Johannesburg and she likes to explore Afrikaner female identity through her works.

I must confess that I have some prejudices against the "Afrikaner identity", which date back to the apartheid regime period. However, the apartheid finished almost 30 years ago and today Afrikaners are as much a part of South African identity as anyone else.

Thinking about this subject made me reflect about so many other factors which influence our perceptions about art and artists, which do not have much to do with the artistic worth of the individuals. I remember similar considerations while choosing the awards for documentary films when I was part of a jury for a film festival in Italy some years ago. We make a great show of objectivity and fair-play but it is not easy to avoid our prejudices. I can imagine that it may not be easy for Rademan to be known as an artist focusing on the Afrikaner female identity.

Protection Suit by Alexio Berto

Italian artist Alexio Berto's sculpture of a man wrapped in a white partially transparent tissue protection suit filled with recycled papers is one of the most explicit references to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic in this exhibition. Most of us must have seen figures dressed in those clothes in the hospitals or at least on the TV screens.

Technique by Giorgio Tentolini

The installation by the Italian artist Giorgio Tentolini has paper-cuttings of huge digital prints of faces. The long stripes of papers in multiple layers move up and down and the faces can be seen only from a distance. I thought that this work expressed the enormity of cosmos and the huge distances between the particles in the atomic world - the closer we go, the lesser we can see and the patterns become clear only from the right distance. The faces disappearing in the stripes also reminded of faces hidden behind veils and how veils can splinter us in pieces, hiding us, protecting us but also killing us in a way, or at least stopping us from living fully by interfering in our interactions with others. I am not sure how Giorgio Tentolini would feel about my interpretations about the significance of this work.

The Happiness I Can't Say by Maikel Domingues

This giant art installation by the American artist of Cuban origins, Maikel Dominguez, occupied a large part of the central hall of Palazzo Fogazzaro. It included a white crystal/resin bunny statue (it did not look like made from paper) placed at the end of a long beautiful carpet, as well as pink tiles with paper figures of more bunnies riding deer on one of the walls. The central bunny sculpture made of numerous white flowers, reminded me of some of the works of the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei. At the same time, Maikel's the choice of the bunny-figures riding on the deer on the wall-tiles, also reminded me of the Tele-Tubbies, a children's TV programme.

I felt that there were some deeper hidden meanings in this art-work though I am not sure of them. Each tile was designed individually and beautifully, once again reminding me of Ai Wei Wei's works. The bunnies were like astronauts, hiding faces of people, and some of them looked sick or dead. Were these people in protection suits? Were all these references linked to Covid-19 pandemic?

Atlas of Fear by Krisimaria Toronen

Finnish artist Krisimaria Toronen had a site specific installation in the toilet of Palazzo Fogazzaro. The art-work included strips of paper and hand-written chains of words growing like a creeper along the walls of the different rooms. The words could have been the DNA of the Corona virus. The most obvious meaning of the installation was the fear of the pandemic, highlighted by locating it in a toilet, which is often seen as the origin of diseases. Normally, modern toilets are all gleaming and clean tiles and seeing them covered with the ants like words was disturbing.

The Adults by Silvia Mei

Silvia is an Italian artist and her work in the exhibition had a brightly coloured painting of people with disturbing faces. I guess she was showing the masks which we carry in the world for hiding our real feelings. The painting was very striking, and while I could appreciate it, I don't think that I would like it in my bedroom.

Psuedobombax Grandiflorum by Margherita Leoni

Italian artist Margherita Leoni had a water-colour painting in this exhibition. Though very simple, I liked the hyper-realism of the flowers and leaves in it. She is known for her beautiful botanical water-colours and she also runs training courses on this theme. If she was based in Schio, I would have loved to join Leoni's water-colours learning classes.

The Night Before The Arrival Of The Barbarians by Kristina Pirkovic

Serbian artist Kristina Pirkovic had a big painting covering one wall of the exhibition rooms. Divided into panels, it probably represented rooms or houses with the parallel lives of people living inside them. Though, the title of the painting was "before the arrival of the barbarians", the people it showed were not particularly happy - actually most of them looked anguished, some seemed to be sick while others had their heads cut-off. There were some animals scattered between them and a sad-looking church with a graveyard in one of the panels. If this was their condition before the barbarians had arrived, what happened after their arrival? A massacre? It was again a very striking and disturbing art work, which I could appreciate but would not like to have it in my bedroom.

Mare Nostrum by Gianfranco Gentile

Gianfranco Gentile is known for his artworks infused with social consciousness. He often uses waste materials like card-board boxes used for packaging, in his art. For Papermade-5, he has a site-specific installation covering one of the pillars in the entrance of Palazzo Fogazzaro. The pillar was covered with cardboard and had collages of fishes, waves, boats and immigrants, trying to cross "Mare Nostrum" (our sea), clearly referring to the immigrant boats from Africa which try to reach Italy and Europe. Unfortunately, the image below does not give a good idea of this work.

Oversight by Art Werger

This artwork by the American artist Art Werger had etching with aquatint prints. It showed an image as if seen through a drone with black eagles flying above the houses. It had hyper-realism with a 3D like effect, which was very nice. Werger is a professor of Printmaking at the University of Ohio and has received a lot of awards for his works.

I wondered if Art is his real name? If yes, his parents must have been artist or at least art lovers, who had wanted their child to become an artist. That makes me thinks of Nietzsche's famous poem about children being the arrows that God launches through us, and I wonder if Art had not wished to be an artist and instead, wanted to be an accountant or an astronomer, how would he have felt about his name?

On his website, Art Werger has explained the ideas behind his work: "My recent work continues to explore themes of time/space and the nature of representation as shared experience. Through the media of etching and mezzotint, these pieces attempt to place the viewer into an active relationship with the subject through various forms of narrative engagement. My subjects are drawn in a realistic manner but are often observed from an unusual angle. I present imagery from an aerial vantage point, or overlapping other layers of reality, taking on the role of the omniscient narrator in a work of fiction."

ZidArta by Suzana Fantanariu

Romania is a special country for this edition of Papermade-5 and it has artworks of different Romanian artists. Among them, I liked the works of Suzana Fantanariu. The one I have chosen to show here is a collage work. I loved its rough textures. I also liked the works of Ana Golici, another Romanian artist in this exhibition.

Fragility of Life by Agniezska Cieslinska

The Polish artist Agniezska Cielinska also uses etching with aquatint for print-making. There are 3 of her works in the exhibition. I have chosen the one with a red background and an intricately designed face made of two cups which fit into each other. Artist and graphic designer Cielinska is a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

Infinite Paths by Johny Hycinte Ngbwa

Johny Ngbwa is an Italian artist of Cameroun origins. His big linocut work full of intricate black and white lines occupies one whole wall of a room in the exhibition. Looking at it from close gave me a sense of vertigo. The lines seemed to create sand dunes of a desert spreading like snakes over a black lake. It was a beautiful work, something I could look at for a long time and continue to find inspiration for Zen meditations. Young looking Johny, also known as Johny Stecchino (from a film-title of Roberto Begnini), is considered to be an emerging talent in incisions-art.

ST/110 by Sandro Battaglia

Italian artist Sandro Battaglia has a set of artistic B/W photographs of the common moka, used for making coffee in the old fashioned way in Italy, against a blue background. By focusing on the different parts of a moka (moca) and looking at them from different angles, Battaglia has created a kind of geometric poem with the composition of the photographs. I found it lyrical and beautiful. Battaglia has collaborated with a number of well-known Italian film-directors including Sergio Leone and Pasolini, and is a big name in photo-journalism.

My Dream by Sopap Petcharaporn

Sopap Petcharaporn from Thailand has a big woodcut print in Papermade-5. It is very intricately designed piece of art. Its subject reminded me of the lock-down photographs and videos from last year (2020) when the absence of humans on the roads and parks had brought out some wild animals in the cities and urban areas. It shows a deer and some birds in an apartment overrun with plants and creepers, while in the open space you can see sky-scrappers. Petcharaporn specialises in creating intricate woodcut work.

Boundaries by Damiano Azzizia

Let me conclude this post with one of my favourite artworks from Papermade-5 - a simple and unassuming work, which had absolutely marvellous texture. It was called Confini (Boundaries) and was by a young Italian artist called Damiano Azzizia. It had the painting of a room, probably on card-board used for packages. I loved the kind of leathery look he had achieved, with an amazing texture. It looked really simple, almost minimalist, and I really liked it.

Conclusions

I had started this post with the idea of selecting 10 artworks, in the end I have chosen 20 and there were still so many others that I had liked, which are not there in this list. For this post, I have chosen images which show close-ups and details of the art-works. Many of the works in this exhibition are actually immense, so these pictures can only give you an idea and you need to fully experience them by visiting the exhibition.

The last image of this post is of an artwork by the Romanian artist Ana Golici. I hope that these images will inspire you to visit the Papermade-5 exhibition.

Epochal Mutations - Contemporary Art Exhibition

Finally the Covid-19 lockdowns are easing and cultural events are being organised. Recently, our city organised a contemporary art exhibition called "Epochal Mutations" (MutAzioni Epocali). When I read the name of the exhibition, I thought that it would be totally influenced by the Covid-19 lockdown and would have a lot of works expressing anguish and fear. So I was not so sure if I wanted to look at it. Fortunately, I changed my mind and visited it - it had a lot of works which I liked. It also introduced me to the works of many new local artists and a few outside artists.

"Mutation" Art Exhibitions have been held in Schio since 2017, but its focus changes every year. For example, in 2019, it was "MutAzioni Spaziali" (Space Mutations). Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, it was not held in 2020.

This year the exhibition was held at Palazzo Fogazzaro, a historical building in the city centre from 1810. In the courtyard there was a work of our Schio sculptor Mario Converio, who works with iron and metals. He is famous for his voluptuous female forms and I had written a post about him. His work for this exhibition is a globe with a storm of birds rising up from it. After this exhibition, this sculpture will be placed in the Schio railway station and will become a public art installation.

In this post I am presenting some of the artists from MotAzioni Epocali exhibition whose works I liked - they are not in any particular order.

During the exhibition, I met one of the artists - her name is Maria Grazia Martina - I will start with her. Her background is in history of art and she teaches in a school. She creates art with mixed materials. I asked her if her background in the history of art influences her as an artist? She said that it was more of a hindrance because she tends to compare of her works with those of well-known artists that she had studied and this makes her feel very self-critical. I could empathise with her feelings because self-criticism is a big challenge for a lot of artists and it is great that in spite of it, she can express her creativity. You can see her with some of her works in the image below.

The next image again shows the details of one of the works of Maria Grazia Martina, which I liked because of the vibrant colours of the fibres which express for me the confusion, interconnections and vitality of life.

The artist Claudio Brunello from Bassano had two works in the exhibition, one on the women of Afghanistan and another on languages and technology - I liked both of them. In the second work, he had used a lot of 3-D printed miniature human figures to express ideas about native languages while computer motherboards expressed use of the increasing use of English coupled with technology - I thought that that it was ironic that he expressed traditions part of this work through 3D printed figures. You can see details from this work in the image below.

Marco Zanrosso's installation "Ecological Equilibrium" had six semi-transparent circles, one in front of the other, moving up and down, creating ever-changing dynamic forms was very beautiful even if the ideas it expressed were too abstract. A large part of its beauty came from the constant movement of the circles and their translucent materials - both these aspects are difficult to appreciate in the image below.

There were many digital works in the exhibition. I understand that artistic expression can not be limited by the materials used by the artists and thus digital art is one such legitimate expression of creativity. However, I feel that having the skills of computer graphics is a different kind of artistic skill and needs to have its own separate art-world, it can't be mixed with art created by persons, using their hands in the the old- fashioned way. Like the works of Claudio Brunello above, I can also see that setting the boundaries between digital and non-digital would anyway be a difficult exercise. Among the artists presenting digital prints, I liked the work of Valeria Cassol, which was titled "When you look up and see the Universe", shown in the image below.

I also liked the digital prints of Slovenian artist Bogdan Soban - with their delicate colours and complex abstract forms, they invited you to look at them and get lost in their details. In fact, I spent a long time looking at his work presented in the image below.

Simone Ricciardello from Vicenza had 2 installations about climate change. One was called "Alone no one will be saved", which was more explicit about its theme. It had an old table fan which started moving when someone came or passed in front of it and then automatically stopped. Another of his installation, "The time of non-return" had a baby angel setup against green tiles and it expressed the time running out to save the planet.

The installations of the Schio artist Elisa Pedron expressed ideas of reincarnation, mutation and evolving through the mythical fire-bird Phoenix and a cosmic egg. You can see her cosmic egg in the banner of this post above while the image below shows the metal circles and the phoenix.

I especially loved the works of Luca Vallortigara, who had used abstract figures in wood to express its different natural colours and textures, which had the power to draw me into introspection and wondering about the meanings of life and nature.

I also liked the multi-material works of Paolo Guglielmo Giorio like the one in the image below that was supposed to express the virus of Covid-19 together with the sea-life suffocated by petrol-spill from a big ship. I think that this was the only work in the whole exhibition which directly mentioned the Covid-19 pandemic. I liked the way the fish-net and the red virus came together against the grey background and the rotting skull (in the image below).

The work of Schio artist Elena Ester Accardo, "After the floods" was supposed to express a recurrent dream which has had. With delicate gold and greens, it had a very pleasing impact, the kind of art you can look at when you are feeling low and feel uplifted by it! While it had an immediate pleasing impact, it also had a complex mix of symbols, which kept me gazing at it and trying to discern their meanings.

The installation of the Schio artist Rosa Paola Astrid represented the countdown clock on the climate change which was put up in Rome in June this year on the World Environment Day. It had paintings of the earth seen from space in changing colours, again giving an expression to the time running out.

The next image shows one of the works of Martina Dalla Stella - it was called "No fear" and it expressed migrations, changing technology, role of police and big corporations and the courage of ordinary people to face them and to fight for rights.

I want to close with the work I liked most in this exhibition - I absolutely loved the mosaic like works of Eva Trentin from Marano Vicentino, with each piece of the mosaic expressing nature, places and moments of life. I felt that I could look at them for hours, find new points of reflection and at the same time, feel an emotional connection with them. Below I have an image from her work "289", made of 289 pieces of mosaic.

Conclusions

As you can see, there were many interesting works in this exhibition. The most common theme chosen by the artists was about the climate change. My favourite works in this exhibition were by Eva Trentin and Elena Ester Accardo. Regarding the installations, I liked most the works of Marco Zanrosso and Claudio Brunello.

As I came out of the exhibition, I saw the sculptor Mario Converio at the gate. He had come to take measurements of his work in the courtyard as it has to be strengthened for its placement in the railway station. We went to a nearby bar to have a beer and to talk about his art and about life.

May be one day I will also write about that conversation with Mario Converio. In the mean time, I hope that you have liked this virtual walk-through at the MutAzioni Epocali exhibition. Even if Schio is a tiny little town, I think that in terms of culture, it is full of wonderful opportunities.

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Venice the City of Water

Chiara Carminati is an Italian poet, translator and author of children's books. On 21st March, it was the World Poetry Day. To celebrate it, our city Schio promoted "Poetry gifts" by sharing poems through some WhatsApp groups. I am part of a local reading group called Lettori in Circolo (Readers in a Circle), which took part in this initiative. Thus, I received some poems, which included one of Carminati's poems called, "A Venezia" (In Venice).

This brief post is about Carminati's poem. I share my translation of this poem and a few thoughts about the feelings it evoked in me. This year (2021) is 1600th anniversary of the foundation of Venice in 421 CE. Thus, this post is dedicated to this beautiful floating town which I love to visit and which is not very far from Schio.

"A Venezia" - A Poem by Chiara Carminati

Nella città d’acqua, in lontananza
paiono pennelli sottili
le punte dei campanili.
Così ciotole di un pittore
rovesciate con eleganza
sono le cupole delle chiese
nella città d’acqua, in lontananza.

Meaning of the Poem:

It is a short and sweet poem. I am not a poet and not a proper translator, however I wanted to share it:

"In the city of water, in the distance
looking like thin brushes
the tips of the bell-towers.
As the painter's bowls
overturned elegantly
are the domes of churches
in the city of water, in the distance."

Feelings Evoked by This Poem

Venice is usually full of tourists. There are times when the crowds are so thick that it is difficult to find a quiet place where you can soak in the quiet atmosphere of this magical town. To experience the quiet and the almost surreal beauty of Venice you need to visit it in autumn or winter. I liked this poem because it captures that special feeling of Venice on a quiet foggy morning.

Venice is full of artists and painters - people who sit on the banks of canals with their sketch books and easels, intent on drawing and painting, while others, holding stacks of paintings look for tourists to sell them. This poem alludes to all of them by looking at the floating city as the working instruments of a water-colour painter - its bell-towers as brushes and its church-domes reflected in the waters as overturned bowls of colours.

Conclusions

I love reading in Italian but I usually avoid reading Italian poems - I have difficulties in appreciating them most of the time, probably because reading and feeling the emotions of poems requires a different kind of relationship with the language. For the same reason, I have difficulties in appreciating English poems. I can appreciate them intellectually but I don't have the emotional connection with them - for that, I need my poems to be in Hindi or Urdu. However, occasionally I come across poems like this one by Chiara Carminati which connects with something deeper inside me and creates magic. (I think that I like this poem so much, also because I love water-colour paintings). 

If you understand Italian and want to read more poems which were shared during our "Poetry Gifts" initiative, you can find them at the Leggere a Schio blog managed by our local library.

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River to River - Festival 2020

River to River (RtoR) film festival was started by Selvaggia Velo in Florence (Italy) in 2001. It was the first festival entirely dedicated to Indian films held outside India. For many years, while living in Bologna, which is not far from Florence, I regularly visited this festival. Some years ago, we shifted to Schio, about 350 km to the north of Florence, so participating in this festival became difficult for me. However, the December 2020 edition of RtoR was held online due to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic. This gave me an opportunity watch some of the festival films. (Below a still from "Berlin to Bombay", one of the films in the festival)

My main interest was in watching documentary and short films in the festival. Thus, I watched only one full-length feature film - Kadakh. This post is to share a few impressions about some of the films which I liked in this festival.

Kadakh

Kadakh was the opening film of the festival, directed by Rajat Kapoor. It is a black comedy centred around a dead body in an upper-middle class drawing room in Mumbai, which is full of guests for a Diwali party.

Sunil (Ranvir Shorey) is the owner of the house while the dead guy is Raghav, husband of his office colleague Chhaya, with whom he is having an affair. Raghav has discovered their affair and comes to talk to Sunil. He is trying to be mature about it, but continues to get too angry to control himself and during one such loss-of-control moments, shoots himself. Soon Sunil's wife (Manasi Multani) comes back home and finds her husband with Raghav's corpse in their drawing room. He confesses his affair but there is no time to deal with the marital infidelity as they know that soon their guests for the Diwali party are going to arrive. So the husband and wife hide the dead body in a box, cover it with tapestry and get ready to welcome the guests.

The guests include Chayya, the wife of the dead man. You can imagine the comic-horror kind of mixed tension which drives this film. The last part of the movie is its most cynical and damning part, with the whole gang of friends (except Chaya, who has left) helping Sunil in getting rid of the dead body. When the film was ending, I almost expected it to show the whole lot going to the chautha (funeral) ceremony of the poor guy and express condolences to the widow.

I do not like the genre of dark comedy, but the film is well made and well-acted. All the actors are good. I especially liked Manasi Multani, who plays Sunil's wife Malti and Palomi Ghosh, who plays Chhaya. I also thought the guy playing Raghav (Chandrachoor Rai) was good in his brief role.

The Newly Weds, short film (5 min.) by Prataya Saha

You can watch this short film on YouTube. The film has a young man (Mahesh Gowda) and his wife (Suvin Valson) and it looks at the way they relate to each other, mediated by technology. When together, they hardly talk to each other and their eyes are constantly on their mobile phones and laptop screens. At night, a laptop stays in the bed between them. However, they expresses their love in the messages they write to each other, in which they open their hearts.

The tiny film presents the role of tech in a young couple's life as a kind of caricature. I felt that it could have been more relatable as a depiction of a long-married couple who does not have much left to say to each other. It felt a bit unrealistic for a young newly married couple, because it seemed to ignore their need for physical touch and sex. Their messages express a yearning, which is inexplicably missing from their real lives.

Berlin to Bombay, documentary film, 51 min. by Marco Hulser

For me, Berlin to Bombay was the most enjoyable film of the festival. It is the story of an Indian origin boy Abu Chaka Khan, raised in Berlin (Germany) and his fascination for the world of Bollywood. Abu works in a restaurant but his dream is to go and act in Bollywood. He does not want to work in German films where he can only play Indian or Pakistani roles - he prefers the idea of Bollywood heroes with their songs and dances.

He makes and sends his videos for auditions to India but when they do not get him any offers, he goes to Mumbai. The film shows him trying to negotiate his way through the barriers surrounding its film world, full of people who are waiting for bakras like him, selling them dreams and taking their money. Abu pays but finds himself playing an extra in a film. After his dreams crash against the hard realities of the Bollywood, Abu comes back to Berlin and to his restaurant.

Though film's storyline is an old theme, Abu has an expressive face and he comes across very well with his ingenuity, hope and dreams.

While the film ended, I was thinking of today's YouTube and TikTok stars. Now, people with dreams of making it in Bollywood, have some alternative pathways to become famous, even if that fame does not last very long. I think that I would like to watch a similar documentary exploring the worlds of the YouTube-TikTok stars.

The GesheMa is Born, Documentary, 56 min., by Malati Rao

Geshe Ma is the title of a learned Buddhist nun who has reached the highest level of religious knowledge. Rao's documentary is a glimpse into the hidden world of Buddhist nuns. I liked it because it showed a world which was unfamiliar to me.

Though ancient Buddhism spoke of nuns, modern Buddhism did not have nuns. It was Dalai Lama who had established the first nuns' order some 40 years ago. He had also proposed allowing the nuns to study religious books. This idea was discussed in the international council of Buddhist leaders from different countries, but some countries were against the changes. Finally in 2012, it was accepted that the nuns could study to become the learned teachers (Geshe).

The film follows a group of nuns in a monastery in Nepal who became the first group of women admitted to the Buddhist theological studies. The film focuses on the story of Namdol Phuntsok, who had earned the top marks in these studies and received the title of Geshe Ma in 2016.

The film moves forward and backward in time, with some interviews and unobtrusive observation of the lives of the Buddhist nuns. They talk about the setting up of the first nunnery. It looks at their celibate lives, their shaving of heads and their determined animation during theological discussions, where a raised leg-movement and clapping of hands in stereotypical gestures, looked like a dance to me.

GesheMa Namdol talks about her childhood and her family's opposition to her idea of becoming a nun, her desire for studying the Buddhist religious texts and how they must argue and debate their ideas and defend them against questions. The film concludes with the group of the nuns holding the coveted yellow head-dresses in their hands, which are a visible sign of their learning, walking in the room full of monks. They all don those yellow head-dresses, signifying a new beginning of the role of the women leadership in Buddhism.

Buddha of the Chadar, 28 Min. by Jean Whitaker

This film can also be watched on internet. It is about a father and son from Ladakh making a long winter journey on the frozen Zanskar River - a route known as the Chadar. They carry a heavy gold-plated statue of Buddha, which they plan to offer to a Buddhist monastery located at the top of the hill near their village.

The film brings out the solitude and difficulties of the long journey on the frozen river surrounded by beautiful snow-covered mountains. It also shows the on-going construction of a new road by the Indian Border Road Organisation, so that in future, the Zanskar valley will also be connected through a road and it should be possible to complete that same journey in a vehicle.

The film has beautiful photography and makes you reflect on the human urge to choose a tough journey as a part of a spiritual quest.

Silence in the Wind, 13 min. by Gautam Baruah and Ballav Prajnyan

This short film is about a father remembering his son, his desire to see him married and his initial rejection when he discovers that his son is gay. His initial reaction is of rejection. Then he remembers the day when his young son had risked drowning in the river and his desperation. The memory of that desperation helps him to say to his son that he does not understand but he will accept.

It is a beautiful film.

The Ashram Children, 67 min., by Jonathan Ofek

India is seen as the land of spirituality. It has many famous gurus with their ashrams, and followers coming from all over the world to seek their guidance. This film shows a hidden aspect of this spiritual quest - the feelings of the expat children about those Gurus.

The director of this film, Jonathan is from Israel and he feels scarred by his childhood experiences in an ashram in India. He feels that it was a cult which had gripped his parents. His parents, especially his mother, do not take his complaints very seriously - for her, it was not a cult and she was only going to the ashram for some months every year.

She tells him that he could have told her that he did not want to go and she would not have forced him. However, Jonathan feels that saying no was not easy for him, because he had grown up inside that experience from early childhood. The whole issue of obedience to the Guru in the ashram was experienced by him as something absolute, he had learned to not question anything and was afraid to express himself.

During the film, Jonathan goes to look for other expatriate children that he had met and known in the ashram during his childhood. Most of them agree with him that their childhood experiences of the ashram were negative for them. Most of them, now grown-ups, try to hide this part of their past lives and do not talk about it. One of these guys also talks about the hypocrisy of the Guru, who taught the lessons of detachment and spirituality to his followers, but also loved wearing gold, luxury watches, and using costly perfumes.

This film forced me to see how the spirituality-and-guru industry of India can be perceived by young children who are pulled in to this experience by their parents. I had never thought about it before in these terms. For me, many of the ashrams and their jet setting Gurus, who run their spirituality businesses like money-making exercises, are persons who profit from human frailties. At the same time, I believe that some of the non-commercial persons can be great spiritual teachers.

Conclusions

There were some other short and documentary films from the festival which I had watched but they were similar in terms of themes and treatment to others that I had seen earlier, so I am not writing about those.

In the past RtoR festival had been an opportunity for me to meet and talk to persons from the world of Indian films - persons like Onir, Rahul Bose, Aparna Sen and even Amitabh Bachchan. That was no longer possible with an online festival. I hope that in future, after the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, River to River festival will continue to offer the possibility of online participation.

Bonsai & the Life in the Plants

Last month I visited a Bonsai exhibition at the Jaquard gardens of Schio. The sight of tiny plants looking like a miniature version of full-grown trees reminded me of a nature-visit in Bologna some years ago. This post is about two different ways of thinking about the life-forces in the plants. At the same time, it is also a reflection about the relationship between humans and nature.

Indian Ideas About Nature

Let me start briefly with some of my ideas about nature, which are influenced by my growing up in India. Hinduism is full of Gods and Goddesses, each of whom is linked with an animal and a plant species. There are many mythological stories that teach one to respect all the beings as a part of the respect for the sacred.

There are different stories linked with plants in the Hindu mythology. Like the story of the sacred Tulsi plant (Indian Basil), which represents a pious prostitute. Thus, people believe that this plant should not be kept inside the house, but must be planted in the courtyard where the families can pray to it at dawn and sunset by lighting a lamp near it. The 1960's Hindi film Parakh had one of my all time favourite songs, Mere Man ke diye (The lamp of my heart), in which Sadhana lights a lamp and prays to Tulsi plant. According to Ayurveda, Tulsi is an important medicinal plant. Such myths and sacred stories, are ways to remind the communities about the importance of different species of plants and animals, and to safeguard the biodiversity.

I remember my grand-mother once telling me to not to pluck the leaves of a plant at night because "the plant was sleeping". I think that such a way of thinking illustrates the popular understandings of life in the plants among Indians. While in the cities, people have a more transactional ideas about nature (for example, that it is good for breathing and well-being, it is relaxing and stress-busting), in the smaller towns and villages of India, I feel that there is still a lot of respect and traditional knowledge about these ancient understandings of nature.

Bonsai Plants

Literally the term Bonsai means "planted in a vase". The aim of growing a Bonsai is to create a realistic representation of nature through a miniature tree.

An exhibition of Bonsai plants was held at the beautiful 19th century Jaquard garden in the centre of Schio. It is a small garden but is very beautiful, with an old theatre and a green-house. The exhibition presented the plants grown by the Bonsai students of Schio under their teacher Dr. Ennio Santacatterina.

I spoke to Ennio to understand about Bonsai. He explained that he had discovered his passion for Bonsai after his retirement. His school is a part of the Bonsai Art School and its classes are held in a local plant shop called Garden Schio.

Ennio sees Bonsai as a part of the Zen traditions from Japan, in which it is fundamental to understand kamae, the basic and essential nature and characteristics of each plant. He cites the Bonsai guru Aba Kurakichi and says, "We must conserve all the specificities of the nature of each plant because Bonsai is a life-art." This means that each plant will develop according to its own characteristics and the Bonsai-maker must know how to enhance its individuality and highlight its beauty by selecting the appropriate style, branches and spaces.

I think that it means that a Bonsai is not created but rather it is nurtured, grown and gently guided. It is an exercise in mindfulness, in which the Bonsai-maker searches for a connection with the plant through silence and meditation, to understand its nature and develops a vision of how it should grow. Then, with patience and mindfulness, the maker helps the plant to achieve that vision.

Free-Growing Nature

While Bonsai speaks the language of Zen, meditation and mindfulness for creating a connection with plants, it seems as if the plant is moulded into an idealised vision of how it should look. It reminded me of another encounter about plants - in 2011, I had an opportunity to meet Mr. Marco Colombari, a gardener and plant-lover from Bologna, who had some very radical ideas about the plants.

Marco had guided us in the discovery of a forest, talking to us about how to observe and "see" the plants. A century ago, this forest was an "aviculture centre", an area for developing and growing different species of birds. Then it had become a hunting laboratory and a honeybee cultivation centre. In the 1980s, surrounded by multi-story apartment buildings, this area was supposed to be used for building more condominiums. However, the local residents had started a campaign to save it as a natural area. It is now managed by an association called Oasi dei Saperi (The Knowledge Oasis), which promotes it as a site for the conservation of biodiversity. It is known as the Forest of St. Anna and is located in the Corticella area of Bologna.

Marco's point was that every plant is a living being and has its own characteristics. He felt that people decide about planting trees and plants without really thinking about those natural characteristics. Thus, every time we cut the branches of a tree for making it fit into our urban landscaping, it is like closing an animal or a bird inside a cage. In the forest, he had shown us parts of the trees where the branches had been cut, making us look at the seeping liquids from the cut surfaces and drawing parallels with injured animals.

Besides the natural forest, St. Anna Forest also has some other areas including a botanical garden for growing medicinal herbs, a small pond which was used in the past for jute production and a group of ash trees with old artificial nests which were used for keeping birds when it was an aviculture centre.

Some Reflections

Listening to Marco had a very strong impact on me. Reflecting on his words and coupled with the philosophy in the Indian sacred books of Upanishads, I feel that it is the same life-force flowing inside the trees and plants which flows in every living being.

How do I reconcile this understanding with our daily business of living? There is a proverb in Hindi which says "If the horse becomes the friend of the grass, what would it eat?" I think that this proverb sums up the basic dilemma of our life - the impossibility of avoiding violence, if we wish to live.

Thus, I think that all life in the world is inter-connected and there is no way we can avoid eating other life forms, till the time comes for us to die when we return back to the earth, turn into our basic elements and become a part of the never-ending cycle of life, death and decay. To me it means respecting nature and all forms of life, which I translate as avoiding giving unnecessary suffering to my fellow creatures. Thus, I feel that individuals can decide if they wish to eat meat or they prefer to be vegetarian or vegan - it is a matter of choice linked with personal convictions.

However, I think that keeping animals to be used for their meat (chicken, ducks, sheep and cows) in narrow spaces, which do not allow them to move, and making them eat food laced with hormones and antibiotics so that they can fatten quickly, or hurting them unnecessarily, are wrong.

It means being kind to the animals and birds that we keep as pets. It means, taking care of the nature so that our biodiversity is maintained and strengthened. It means that if we have a zoo or a circus, we shall ensure dignified spaces for keeping the animals and treat them with care. I think that zoos and wild-life parks can play an important role in saving species close to extinction and in teaching young people about the importance of safeguarding nature and biodiversity.

Some people would completely separate humans from other animals because they see all human-animal interactions as basically evil and unwelcome for the animals. They are against keeping pet animals, they don't like zoos, they do not want any experiments involving animals - I feel that it is an extreme view and does not help the animals or the nature.

I hope that science and technology would soon progress so that one day we can have all kinds of food, including meat and fish, grown in cell-cultures. In the meantime, I would like more humane conditions for the animals we keep for meat.

Conclusions

Coming back to the plants, does making the plants grow as miniaturised Bonsai trees means that the plants are being forced into unnecessary suffering? Probably Marco Colombari would say yes. I don't think so. I feel that Bonsai practice, by helping us to seek a connection with the plants through mindfulness and meditation, is another path to recognising the importance of nature.

The evolution has made different life-forms co-dependent on each other. We have biomes inside each of us, made of billions of bacteria and viruses - every time we are ill and take medicines, we are killing millions of them. Life, death and decay are a part of a never-ending cycle going around us all the time and there is no way we can say that we don't want to be a part of this cycle.

This reflection about the life in the plants, makes me think of Shiva, the Hindu God who controls the never-ending cycles of creation and destruction in the universe. I think that Shiva is a metaphor of the life and death which connects together all the organic and inorganic matter of the universe. It is the life-force moving the particles composing the atoms, which combine to make the molecules of different elements, the building-bricks of everything in the universe. Life and death are illusions, because those atoms and the forces moving their particles, they do not die and will continue to combine and create new forms all the time.

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