Amit Dutta

Mother, Who Will Weave Now? attempts to sample and mirror the grand tapestry of Indian textile tradition and history by interweaving snippets of Indian cloth on an editing table, using the poetic meters of classical Indian literature sewn together with the words and motifs of the weaver-saint Kabir.

In ‘Abhagir Swarga’ the mother Abhaghi is a lower caste woman, whose only dream was that after her death she should be cremated with full rituals like the high-caste Hindus. She dies in penury and his son went further into the debt trap to fulfill his mother’s last wish.

How do the vicissitudes of contemporary notions of nationhood alter our relationship with cultural patrimony? It’s a question obliquely suggested by Amit Dutta’s latest film. As a camera explores the architecture of a museum, we hear a description of a painting we never see. Eventually, we leave the building behind and examine the remains of a temple, explored to weather and war. Sensual and rigourous, The Game of Shifting Mirrors reaffirms Dutta’s place as India’s most accomplished experimental filmmaker.

Jangarh Singh Shyam, a famous Indian artist born in an isolated tribal village, committed suicide in a Japanese museum in 2001. I found on an old MiniDV tape the images of a trip I had undertaken in 2008, when I had gone looking for him in his native region.

The project attempts to push the boundaries of cinema by juxtaposing it with ideas from philosophy, visual art, chess, mathematics, geometry, linguistics and psychology

Guler, a small principality near Kangra, was an artistic and cultural wellspring since it's accidental inception in the 15th century. Many greats like painters Pandit Seu, his sons Manaku, Nainsukh, and the poet Brajraj were born here. Today the whole system of patronage under which lofty endeavours were possible even in financially austere conditions is gone. And tragically even the physical landscape is submerged under a dam. The film seeks out some traces of the submerged past, through the memories of those left behind, a condensation of a bygone civilization.

Synopsis:An eighteenth century notebook from the Western Himalayan Hills has recorded in it dreams as omens. Scenes from the waking memory of the artist seem to have enlivened dreams from a bygone era. Coming from the family ateliers of the master painter Nainsukh of Guler, this journal of dreams is interesting not only for its ethnographical documentation but also for the excellent artistic qualities of the illustrations, underlined delightfully with sound and rhythm by the director Amit Dutta.

Suggestions of ancient and modern myths and folklore coalesce in dreams to bring alive a colourful animated world.

Towards the end of the eighth century, an architect journeys across the lower Himalayas in search of the perfect site for constructing a temple, not merely as a place of worship but as a monumental record crystallizing the collective accomplishment of a civilization.

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.

When a gallery of paintings becomes emptied of its spectators, the curtains raise within the paintings.

This film explores various aspects of litterateur and painter Ram Kumar's personality by structuring the film around his stories and paintings, traveling between fragments of his past, present, fiction and imagery. It strives of etch out the synthesis of word and image in Ram Kumar's creations, presenting it as a portrait of the artist himself. The text used in the film is from various short stories by Ram Kumar.

The 18th century Pahari miniatures illustrating the verses of 'Gita Govinda' by the poet Jayadeva, are also loving and intimate portraits of the verdant landscape of the Kangra Valley. Nature becomes a primary actor and the director focuses on the alchemy of the 'transformation of nature in art.'

Professor B.N. Goswamy travels back along the path of some forty years’ research on the 18th century Indian master-painter Nainsukh. Field-Trip follows the scholar in the lower western Himalayas as he tracks down contemporary vestiges of Nainsukh’s lineage.

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.

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.

Amit Dutta recorded several conversations with Prof. B.N. Goswamy, an important art historian of India, covering his entire body of work. Interspersed with his talks were also some silences. This film draws upon some of those moments of silence and weaves them into a web of ideas and images that fill the art-historian’s mindscape.

Two travelers who are in search of a flying-craft, which they believe could possibly take them to the ultimate escape from the cycle of births. On their way they record their memories, dreams and fears in a sound-recorder and a notebook.

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.

Three different stories set in India of men struggling to understand their relationships with women.

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.

An ascetic walks through the narrow streets of a village every morning while his family is still asleep. In his semi-somnolent state he dreams about the history of the village mixing up myths, folklore and facts.

A rare and intimate glimpse into the everyday life of the famously reclusive and creative Warli tribe. Ramkhind is a village in Thane district, a little over 100km from Mumbai. Yet in the year 2000, this village had managed to stay centuries away from the mainstream, preserving it's ancient way of life and rich ecosystem. Gods, ghosts and tigers still inhabited their world.

A nostalgic tale about childhood bazaars, scents and smells.

A boy plays with his balloon. Something unexpected happens.

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 Kangra Valley of Himachal Pradesh has a living tradition of the age-old water distribution system regionally called 'kuhls'. The custodians of the kuhls, or water-channels are the 'kohlis'. This film follows contemporary kohlis and their struggles in keeping the system alive.

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.