The Unknown Craftsman

Deftly blending sound, image, and text, this subtly hypnotic film meditates upon the figure of Singh commingled with surreal tableaux inspired by the artist’s paintings. First glimpsed wandering the valley’s dense woodlands, the painter is seen peering through the sun-dappled canopy; soon he spies a mysterious footprint and follows the forest path to the base of a gnarled old tree. There he sits in Buddha-like repose while Dutta’s protean camera conjures a series of arresting images: rocks defy gravity and levitate gently upwards; lichens and moss multiply in layered afterimages mimicking Singh’s intricate brushstrokes; and a celestial maiden takes to the sky, bearing ambrosial milk to the artist’s darkened atelier. Dutta masterfully weaves these iconic passages together with Singh’s painterly technique, merging the still and moving image into an impressionistic assemblage that pays homage to the legends, folk traditions, and artistry of this unique corner of India.

The film is based on and inspired from the tinted brush drawings, sketches and some finished yet minimalistic works of the 18th century master miniature painter Nainsukh. Even in some of his finished paintings, the artist did not hide his corrections and afore-thoughts, which he allowed to show through a mostly untouched stark page. This film attempts the same.

The 18th-century Indian painter Nainsukh of Guler receives a poetic, visually stunning tribute from a young Indian filmmaker employing an arresting pictorial language. Shot in the region where Nainsukh produced his most celebrated work, this is a meditative and meticulous recreation of the world of an artistic genius.

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

A thespian rehearses a Sanskrit play from 2nd century CE. The footage is robbed of sound. The inter-titles try to tell the story.

A tribute to Jonas Mekas. A tree is cut down, a caterpillar climbs its own thread, and drops of moisture tremble on broad leaves.

The film juxtaposes two journeys, one in search of the name of a Pahari painter lost in genealogical registers, and the other in search of a lake once called the eighth wonder of the world.

The village artist Jangarh Singh Shyam left home and became a well-known contemporary painter. He committed suicide in 2001. Through his art, places and stories, the filmmaker explores the traces he left on his path.

Dutta’s new feature finds Hindi experimental writer Krishna Baldev Vaid (1927–2020)—who was born in what is now Pakistan and migrated to India during Partition—living with his daughter in a small apartment in New York. “At ninety-one, after a lifetime of his love affair with language, he feels at a loss for words. His mercurial intelligence scales his life’s journey, mostly in silence. He reads out his own work, anxious to access the ‘dance of language,’ for expressing which he had paid dearly. He takes brief walks into the city, the sounds are not those of his literature. He has visitors, enacting an avant-garde play. He watches, silent, his mind in a place deeper inside him, even as his senses are alert, looking outwards”

The critic Max Nelson asks Amit Dutta a series of ten questions. He replies in the form of a video essay.