Fireflies
A Film by Poulomi Basu & CJ Clarke
Winner, ‘Best Experimental’ Aesthetica Film Festival 2022
Password: F$re32!
Two channel installation, presented here as a single channel piece.
Fireflies is a work of auto-fiction, filtering documentary and performance through the lens of feminist science-fiction to tell the story of violence, survival and world-building.
My mother and grandmother were both child brides and survivors of domestic-sexual violence.
I wrote myself in these various landscapes where you see me returned to earth to heal. I believe a womxn’s understanding of and engagement in our environment is vital. This perspective resists the logic of capitalist economies which places the exploitation of the planet at its centre.
Alona Pardo (Barbican), writes, "Fireflies underscores a matrilineal heritage and genealogy that speaks to the violence which is all too often bestowed on womxn's bodies, highlighting female oppression and the hetero-patriarchal cultural values that are also a shared trauma, and notions of self love.”
Creating a dynamic interplay that transports the viewer into a multiverse outside of the space time continuum —One film is narrative: crash landed and alone, an astronaut find herself on a barren planet where time collapses and the past, present and future merge. The other film is a work of cybernetic feminism.
Using 16mm film and archives, Fireflies disrupts notions of time to locate the work in its own terra.
MAYA: THE BIRTH OF A SUPERHERO
A Film by Poulomi Basu & CJ Clarke
“GENUINELY EMPOWERING. THIS IS GALVANISING, BOUNDARY-PUSHING ART AT IT'S BEST.”
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
— Charlotte Jansen,The Guardian
The story of a South Asian girls coming of age and the awakening of her sexuality. She must overcome her own shame and fear to find her inner strength and true super-powers.
With the arrival of her first period Maya’s world is turned upside down as she is confronted by the restrictive traditions of her conservative family and a world of hidden shame, stigma and taboo in contemporary London.
An odyssey of womanhood and femininity, referencing ancient symbols of spiritual and feminine power, the piece draws together the real and the imaginary to trace possible paths to resilience and justice. The Player must discover a radical power based on self love, care and solidarity.
Starring Indira Varma (Game of Thrones), Charithra Chandran (Bridgerton)
Produced by Just Another Production Company and Floréal in co-production with France Télévision – Francetv Storylab, in conjunction with the Meta VR for Good program.
This project was possible thanks to the support of the CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, The City of Paris and Digital Catapult/Creative XR. It was developed with the support of the Immersive Creators Catalyst established by Women in Immersive Technologies Europe (WITT) and Unity for Humanity.
Maya: The Birth of a Superhero is best experienced in a headset on the Meta Quest Store.
Headsets can be provided, if required. Please contact us to arrange.
CENTRALIA: GHOST DANCE
A Film by Poulomi Basu & CJ Clarke
Password: M@gic32!
Permenant collections:
Victoria & Albert Museum (UK)
Harvard Art Museums (USA)
“We have run out of new places to conquer, new places to mine, new places to dam. The remaining oil resources are there in places where it is untenable or difficult to get. They are now coming to those most remote places – the Ramu Nickel Mine, the TarSands of Alberta.” Winona LaDuke
A narrative of “docu-fiction,” ‘Centralia: Ghost Dance’ (which takes its cues from Basu’s critically praised book, ‘Centralia’) transforms the story of a decades-long indigenous guerrilla war in Central India into an ambiguous narrative that unsettles our understanding of truth, media, violence, feminism, and environmentalism within a global context.
The films captures the struggle between forest-dwelling indigenous populations in central India where the coveted mineral deposits of iron ore, bauxite, and coal are mined and exploited by outside forces, including the Indian government. The displaced tribal population has responded and rebelled since the 1960s by organizing as Maoist revolutionaries called Naxalites. In 2009 this simmering conflict esculated into a full blown insurgency, pushing the country to the brink of civil war.
The film draws us in with lyrical images of mysterious landscapes and figures. It is a work of science fiction that uses the very real global ecocide to speculate on the end of the world, the continued dispossession of indigenous groups and the further erosion of women’s rights. An eco-feminist narrative that imagines that the only survivors of this ecological holocaust are a group of women sent out into the cosmos, as a final act of survival.
At it’s heart, the film asks a very simple, urgent question: how did humanity get here?