Screening of Arbab Ahmad’s powerful documentary film, Insides and Outsides. The film ebbs and flows between looking outside in his surroundings, where a constant stream of hate erupts and engulfs all sides, and inside, where Arbab’s parents back home renegotiate their sense of identity with a changing political reality.
Insides and Outsides
Date: 5th July| Time: 6:00 pm| Venue: Alliance Française de Delhi | Entry by ticket
Director’s statement:
The documentary’s form attempts to communicate a fractured sense of time and constant anxiety that is felt by Muslims in this country. As the film is a deeply personal take on a larger political topic, I use archival media, stop motion animation, voice over to jump back and forth between a present that is increasingly hostile and also trace a history which brought us to this point. I want to communicate a feeling of everything being felt all at once, where there is no point of rest even when there is perceived peace in the day to day. The point is not to educate an audience about communalism, since I feel there are plenty of resources for that, but to open the doors for everyone to witness a single family unit, who are living a reality that is at times relatable and at other times doomed and dystopian. The primary lens of the film is my own, as I try to bare all of my anxieties onto the screen. My parents are an extension to this and are active collaborators in the process of making this documentary. My subjects do not go beyond my own family because I feel I can be more honest with them. Moreover in the aspects of safety I do not want to garner too much attention on a larger mass of people.
About the Filmmaker:
Arbab Ahmad is a Visual Designer and Filmmaker currently based in Delhi-NCR. He’s been freelancing for 8 years, with collaborations ranging from fiction, documentary, ad films and reality television. He was part of the editing team behind “Moving Upstream – Ganga”, a documentary that has been showcased at Indian Film Festival Stuttgart, Labocine, London Indian Film Festival, IDSFFK and won the “Cinema of Resistance” award at Signs Film Festival. His short fiction film ‘Teaser’ won a Special Mention at Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival and was showcased at Signs Film Festival, John Abraham Short Film Festival and Goa Short Film festival. His first feature film as a director – Insides and Outsides premiered at IDSFFK 2023 and won the best editing award, and best medium length documentary at Madurai International Documentary and Short Film Festival.