Indian Space Dreams - a feature documentary that explores the juxtaposition of two adjacent communities in Mumbai
- Submitting institution
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Bournemouth University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- 330883
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- Sequoia Films
- Month
- January
- Year
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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1 - Journalism, Conflict and Social Change
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Indian Space Dreams’ is a feature-length documentary film which was both complex and challenging to make because of difficulties in gaining access to the previously undocumented world of Indian space engineering and sustaining access for many years. The mock REF reviewers drew attention to this: “Sudbury’s bricolage approach, weaving eight years of data gathering...is a remarkable achievement” and noted the complex and multi-layered approach. This ambitious multi-dimensional film goes beyond the science to chart the lives of individuals and communities at all levels of society.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The geographical context for this practice-research feature documentary was Mumbai where, at the TATA Space Research Centre, astrophysicists were designing and building instruments for India’s first astronomical satellite. This unique access allowed me to be the first person to film ‘behind-the-scenes’ of an Indian space mission. I adopted a ‘bricolage’ approach, a term used by Claude Levi-Strauss to mean ‘pottering about’ amid different kinds of sources and methodologies. I spent eight years data gathering (2010-2018) using visual ethnographic and observational documentary techniques to engage a potentially wide and general audience with the lived experiences of people from another culture.
In the West, the dominant discourse questions whether space research can be justified in a developing country with high levels of poverty. So when one of the space scientists invited me to film his science class with the children in the slum the other side of the wall from the Space Research Centre, this presented an opportunity to explore this juxtaposition. The film intercuts these two worlds to question notions of space and our relationship with it. These experiences are multi-layered in that the astrophysicists and children inhabit different yet adjacent spaces in Mumbai with the former pre-occupied with outer space while the latter with spaces here on earth. The research insights are described in detail in the accompanying power-point.
To date, these new insights have been disseminated through broadcast screenings to 91 different countries in: Asia, the Middle East and Africa via the National Geographic Channel, NHK, Japan, SVT, Sweden and NTR, the Netherlands. The film premiered at London’s Bloomsbury Curzon cinema, attended by Vinita for the Q and A, followed by screenings at Lighthouse and Rex cinemas, Florence, BZN, Raw Science and Silbersaltz International film festivals and at Mumbai University where Sandhya joined for the Q and A.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
