Ashish Avikunthak

Recalling memories of a friend who committed suicide, three lovers slowly slide into an anguish labyrinth of desire, loss and longing. They entangle in a colliding maze of forsaken loves, failed expectations and imperfect anticipations. A disintegrating web arises in which love exists, but as dispassionate yearning. Here affection is an indifferent desire that burns the soul to death.

In a parallel universe in our own space-time continuum, humanity has been overrun by artificial intelligence. The machines are better, faster and more efficient at everything, outstripping their makers. However, one aspect of humanity escapes them: love. Their guidebook attempts to capture the phenomenon in 64 terms, including jealousy, regret and ardour. Posing in homey and romantic settings, they run through the entire spectrum with digital precision, yet without a hint of passion. Director Ashish Avikunthak outlines a worrying, yet confusing impression of a posthuman future in which technology has overtaken and annexed humanity. He presents the new masters of the universe as 2.0 versions of the Hindu pantheon. Yet while Hanuman, Shiva and Kali sometimes reveal all too human traits, this is definitely not the case when it comes to love. Loves dies out with humanity.

In confrontational conversations with his wife and his lover, a middle-aged Indian policeman opens up about his work as a 'sacrificial assistant', a state-designated agent tasked with extra-judicial killings of Muslim men. Elsewhere in the city, Lord Krishna and the prince Arjuna enact a dialogue from the Bhagavad Gita. Paralysed into inaction during battle by human considerations, Arjuna seeks the counsel of Krishna, who instructs him on the moral duty of a warrior.

In 1997, Ashish Avikunthak filmed a sequence -- a friend and artist, Girish Dahiwale, immersing an idol of Ganesha at Chowpati beach, Bombay on the last day of the Ganapati festival. A year later, he committed suicide. After twelve years, Avikunthak completed the film. Using his footage as the leitmotif, this film is a requiem to a dead friend, and metamorphosises into an “existential inquiry into the idea of death”.

This is a video about the Park Street cemetery in Calcutta - one of the earliest colonial cemeteries in the world – its degrading conditions and its status as an abandoned legacy of an empire lost and forgotten.

‘Et cetera’ is a tetralogy of four separate films that seek to examine the various levels at which the reality of human existence functions.

Having invaded Lanka to rescue his abducted wife, Lord Ram must face the mighty Meghnad, Lanka’s invincible crown prince. What should have been a righteous battle between equals is manipulated by the gods, who conspire to favour Ram and deceive Meghnad.

Abstract film about a man and a woman (maybe) in love.