Jul 7, 2010
Screening of ‘Notes on Man Capture’ and interaction with Director Nandini Bedi
On Saturday, the 17th of July at 7:30 pm there shall be a screening of the documentary Notes on Man Capture and interaction with its director Nandini Bedi.
Nandini Bedi (a once-upon-a-time Hyderabadi) is a documentary film maker and has been working, along with her anthropologist husband, for many years with the Garo Hill tribes of the North East. Her film, Notes on Man Capture, is an entertaining and deeply serious film about a very small social set-up, and its effects on marriage
About ‘Notes on Man Capture’
It is a truth (not very widely) accepted that to capture a man, then
immediately marry him, you need a chicken.
But not because the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
The Garo Hills, an extension of the Eastern Himalayas. When the cotton
is in bloom, it is the season for man capture. Men from one village
capture men from another for marriage to their unmarried sisters,
cousins and nieces. If a man accepts the marriage, he moves into the
village of his wife and shares her property. And if he doesn’t?
Ratmi, a young, single mother wants to get married. The film follows
the process of capturing a man for her as it observes the players
behind Ratmi’s marriage in 2000/2001 and again in 2006.
As we follow Ratmi’s story, some questions emerge for us. What does
India look like as it is in some types of unseen fringes, where power
shifts back and forth from individual to group, man to woman, the
person behind the camera and the people in front of it? This film
about the India that we don’t see, reverses some of the dominant
images we see all the time about caste, gender and difference.
Dir: Nandini Bedi
43 minutes.
Garo with English subtitles
