258 Black Mountain

Black Mountain (258)

11:30, Thursday 02nd July, Theatre B

  • Director: Charlotte Whitby-Coles (UK) Amin Hajee (IND)
  • Year: 2008
  • Run time: 84'
  • Format: mini DV, PAL

A once unremarkable site of multi-faith pilgrimage to a Sufi Saint has been transformed and its local history rewritten - the film documents the journey of Charlotte, a student undertaking her PhD research in India, who, whilst researching religious pilgrimages, stumbles upon the politicisation of a pilgrimage site in western India.  The research suggests that the pilgrimage site of Kalo Dungar or Black Mountain, situated in the Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, provides a micro-example of current political issues in India today, where by the ‘unity in diversity’ of the country is slowly being broken-down destroying any hope of communal peace.

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About this Festival

Sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain & Ireland (RAI) since 1985, it is an itinerant festival that moves biennially from one university host to another, in association with local community and cultural organisations.

The festival was held from Wednesday July 1st to Saturday July 4th 2009, and included over 50 hours of screenings of new films, a major international conference, and a targeted selection of events focusing on anthropological ethics in filmmaking, youth participatory film, and archiving ethnographic film.

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