SACF starts a new Merchant Ivory Heritage Project
South Asian Cinema Foundation ( SACF) has started a new project titled: ‘Merchant – Ivory Indo-British period films & documentaries (1963 -2001)’.
This film history project will be researching and examining relevant Merchant Ivory films and documentaries that fall within this category.
During the Project SACF will work with a diverse group of community volunteers and encourage, support and involve them in Project activities and public events.
To equip volunteers with relevant skills, we will offer them online and other learning opportunities in areas such as: film research and writing/ proofreading for a book/ portraiture/ screenwriting/ short documentary filmmaking.
Other Project activities and outcomes will be:
⁃ Screening a few significant Merchant Ivory period films in some London venues,
⁃ Producing a book of biographies on the main personalities involved in Merchant Ivory period films,
⁃ Organising a Pageant of some important people linked with Merchant Ivory period films,
-Holding public talks of our Project findings,
⁃ Producing a short documentary on the main findings of the Project.
Besides offering learning opportunities, Project Volunteers will be encouraged and supported to engage with, participate and contribute to all Project activities, events and outcomes/ products. They will also be prominently credited for their contribution and input into the Project.
The Project will enable SACF to complete their overview and analysis of a century of Indo-British cinema in the UK stretching from 1908 to 2001.
With funding from UK’s prestigious Heritage Lottery Fund, it was in 2011 that we began our first Indo-British film project. It was focussed on an Indian film veteran who had ventured into silent films in the UK and gone on to make a mark in talking films as well as documentary filmmaking in India.
Titled: ‘Lifting the Curtain: Niranjan Pal & Indo-British Collaboration in Cinema (1908-1931)’, this Project uncovered films that are landmarks in the history of Indo-British and Indian cinema.
The second Project which began in 2015 was titled: ‘A Hidden Heritage: Indo- British film collaboration in the UK (1930-1951)’.
In our current Project we will cover the era from 1963 when Merchant Ivory made their film debut with ‘The Householder’ (starring Shashi Kapoor and Leela Naidu), to 2001 when they made ‘Mystic Masseur’ based on a comic novel of the same name by V. S. Naipaul.
TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES ORGANISED SO FAR:
1. Training in Film Research at the BFI on Saturday 23 September 2023.
2. Online Introduction to Portraiture by a professional London based artist on 3 consecutive Saturdays on the 7, 14 and 21 of October from 3-5 every day.
For ongoing and upcoming SACF’s HLF Heritage Project activities, events and training, please watch this space.
You can also contact SACF via this email:
lalitmohanjoshi@gmail.com
Kusumpantjoshi@gmail.com
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