Filmed with a night vision infrared camera, a hunters’ lair and a derelict house inhabited by bats set the scene for reflections on the link between humankind’s exploitation of the natural world and the outbreak of new virus pandemics.

In 1969, Mani Kaul made his debut feature film ‘Uski Roti’ (A Day’s Bread) which brought in radically fresher environment in Indian cinema that was much burdened by theatricality and realism. He drew aspects of Indian (both Buddhist and Hindu) philosophical texts, e.g. the Vaisheshika school of Hinduism that like Buddhism accepted two reliable means of knowledge - perception and inference. Could absence be perceived in or through presence? Could time be perceptibly felt? These were some of the ideas that Kaul grappled with. For Kaul, cinematography was temporal. Fifty years later, through my ‘Prayoga’ film ‘The Falling Fruit. The Frozen Time. And the Five Variations on Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti,’ I am revisiting Kaul’s film, creating five variations from its key inaugural shot which has become my basic note. Here, time suspends itself and makes the ‘absence’ felt. These five variations have given rise to different experiences by retaining Mani Kaul’s thoughts. The film is made over the course of six months with regular mobile phones and homemade equipment. These are the elements of ‘The Rigour of Austerity’ which is the core principle of film theorist Amrit Gangar’s concept of ‘Cinema of Prayoga´.

LIFE IS A TWO-WAY DREAM shows the way in a world undergoing rapid change, with polarisation and globalisation going in many directions. We are in an age marked by the adoration of youth, fixation on the present and extreme individualism. The wisdom from the shaman’s worldview from the old Sami religion helps weave together another interpretation and story.

The rise of mining made post-communist Mongolia the fastest growing economy in the world in 2012. However, the poor were not profiting from this booming industry, and climate change plus overgrazing were leading to vast desertification. According to Mongolian shamanistic belief violation of nature by men provokes the anger of the ruling spirits or the ‘masters of the land’. Texts by shamaness Kyrgys Khurak and Hungarian poet Ferenc Juhasz, who experienced the painful initiation of a shaman in 1957, cut the medium long shots. Interweaving the rich spiritual Mongol tradition with a visual portrait of the country, Masters of the Land submerges the viewer in an intoxicating finale.

Hovering between the physical and spirit world, twin sisters seek retribution. Through the unseen help of their ancestors and unusual coincidences, the twins learn the secret weakness of the witch.

The film XX-20 is a kaddish that invites us to rethink the catastrophes of the 20th century through a perspective of the Event. It reveals itself in front of an empty grave and takes on a different meaning, and thus an eschatological responsibility for it. Hiroshima, the siege of Leningrad, Gulag: these three disasters associated with modern reality carry in them a genetic memory and interconnect in a single number XX020.

Lilith, the fairy, the black moon, banished wife from men and their gods whom she claimed to be equal, a wandering madonna of Aleppo and Gaza, light trickles through the folds of her veil, makes her pellucid, crystalline.