Random Frontiers

2007-10-05T11:43:00.019-07:00

2007-06-28T21:00:00.003-07:00

Yours Truly, Yamuna

a feature film screenplay

by Vaidehi Chitre

Semi-Finalist, Moondance International Film Festival, 2007

MCMA Creative Activity Grant, 2004

Synopsis: MALINI is a successful Bollywood director on the lookout for a change. On a casual visit to a friend she stumbles upon the letters of DR. ANANDI JOSHI, India’s first woman doctor.

Nineteenth century India- revolution is in the air, the struggle against British rule is beginning to take shape, social reformers are struggling for women’s rights, and a large number of women are recording their world view through letters and diaries.

Married at the age of ten to GOPAL JOSHI, an eccentric postmaster passionate about women’s education, Anandi Joshi is only twelve when she becomes a mother and loses her child. She wants to become a doctor but medical schools in India at this time don’t allow women. After years of struggle, against all manner of opposition, Anandi, sets sail for America by herself on the S.S Etruria.

Nineteenth century America, also in the midst of social upheaval, is curious about Anandi. Who is this girl who is neither white nor black, comes from a 'colonized' nation, eats vegetarian food, wears ‘native’ clothes that are inadequate to American winters, and says she wants to be a doctor?

As Malini pursues the story her own personal life goes through a spiral. She loses helpers and finds new friends in unexpected places.

2007-05-15T07:49:00.002-07:00

Other Side of the Door

a play by

Vaidehi Chitre

Selected for

Samuel French Off Off Broadway Original Short Play Festival, 2005

Journeys: A Festival of New Plays, 2005

Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Region III, 2006

The Other Side of the Door is a play about two women who find they have exchanged roles in a cycle of suspicion for centuries.

Stills from a performance of 
Other Side of the Door produced by
the School of Theater, SIUC
for
Journeys: A Festival of New Plays.

Directed by Rebecca Fishel-Bright

Cast: Callie Tsoukalas, Marina Smelyansky
and Jaime Moss

Photos by Rebecca Fishel-Bright

2007-04-14T08:31:00.006-07:00

MFA (CINEMA)
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 2005

MA (ENGLISH)
University of Mumbai, 2000

PGD (SOCIAL COMMUNICATION MEDIA)
Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, 1998

BA (ENGLISH)
St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, 1997

2007-04-14T08:20:00.025-07:00

Vaidehi Chitre is a filmmaker and writer. She has produced, written, directed and edited a number of short films that have showcased at international festivals. Her writing has been selected for various festivals including the Samuel French Off Off Broadway Original Short Play Festival. Some of her work is available online.

Vaidehi has an MFA in Cinema from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, an MA in English Literature from the University of Mumbai, a PG Diploma (Social Communication Media) from Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai and a BA in English Literature from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai.

Her creative interests are nonfiction and narrative filmmaking, film and video editing, sound design, fiction writing, screenwriting and playwriting. Her research interests include third cinema, postcolonial theory, and oral history.

Vaidehi is currently editing her documentary film, Bottle Masala in Gaothan City (working title).

2007-04-14T04:32:00.018-07:00

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, 2007

Festival
East Speaks, Here: Culture Unplugged Film Festival, 2008

Between the Lines, 2006

Festivals
IAWRT IIC Asian Women's Film Festival, New Delhi, 2007
IAWRT IIC Asian Women's Film Festival, Open Space, Pune, 2007
Reel Women International Film Festival, Los Angeles, 2006
Aaina Film Festival (Tasveer), Seattle, 2006

Grant
MCMA Creative Activity Grant, 2005

Outside the Saying of it, 2005

Festivals
DNA Jaipur Film Festival, Jaipur, 2008
East Speaks, Here: Culture Unplugged Film Festival, 2008
New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival, New York, 2007
SAVAC MONITOR 3, Toronto, 2007
Ms. Films Festival, North Carolina, 2006

Equal and Opposite, 2005

Festivals
East Speaks, Here: Culture Unplugged Film Festival, 2008
BYOFF, Puri, 2006
Jersery City Museum Video Showcase, JC Studio Tour, New Jersey, 2006

Yours Truly, Yamuna, 2005

Festival
Semi-finalist at the Moondance International Film Festival, 2007

Grant
MCMA Creative Activity Grant, 2004

Other Side of the Door, 2005

Festivals
Samuel French Off Off Broadway Original Short Play Festival, 2005
Journeys: A Festival of New Plays, 2005
Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Region III, 2006

2007-04-13T10:05:00.024-07:00

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow is an abstract meditation on memory and time, fluidity and disconnect, harmony and dissonance.

Genre: Experimental
Format: 16 mm, DV
Dur: 6 min
Year: 2007

2007-04-13T09:42:00.016-07:00

Jugalbandi

An art and gender documentation project, the film is inspired by the tradition of call and response in Indian classical music and 'rangoli,' an Indian folk art form.

Genre: Experimental
Format: 16 mm, DV
Dur: 1 min, 47 sec
Year: 2006

2007-04-12T19:10:00.018-07:00

Equal and Opposite

Equal and Opposite probes under the skin of one organic life in an industrial community. ‘A Man’ falls asleep on a beach, a fractured oasis surrounded by grey concrete, and dreams of release from the ‘Watchers’ who combine their powers to bring him into their fold. The man wakes up and in a climactic moment, the true nature of his dream is revealed.

Equal and Opposite originated in Super 8 but was finished in digital video. This film experiments with time and motion (as Super 8 Tri X, Kodachrome and Ektachrome film is transferred to DV and then slowed down), texture (the granular quality of Super 8 reversal film) and sound, (as the sound of the man’s interior landscape takes on a deafening volume) and the shadowy, dream-like manifestations of the ‘Watchers’ are contradicted by harsh, industrial sounds such as those of peak-hour Bombay traffic.

Genre: Experimental Narrative
Format: Super 8, DV
Dur: 12 min
Year: 2005

Festivals
East Speaks Here: Culture Unplugged Film Festival, 2008
BYOFF, Orissa, 2006
Jersey City Museum Showcase, JC Studio Tour, New Jersey, 2005

2007-04-12T12:02:00.029-07:00

Between the Lines

Between the Lines is about the filmmaker’s search for Dr. Anandi Joshi, India’s first woman doctor, through her letters, places in which she lived, archival photographs, color still photographs taken at sites related to her life, and during a visit to the Rural Cemetery of Poughkeepsie where her ashes are buried.

Popular texts on Dr. Joshi portray a tragic, submissive victim bullied into a vocation in which she had no interest by an abusive husband, who used her for his own reformist ambition. Evoking her voice, the documentary reclaims Dr. Joshi's agency vis-à-vis her letters, exploring her uneasy balance between feminism and tradition.

Between the Lines also explores absence, memory, and neglect and is an experimental film about trying to 'remember' what one has never known but might have been.

Genre: Documentary
Format: 16 mm, Super 8, DV
Dur: 18 min
Year: 2006

Festivals
IAWRT IIC Asian Women's Film Festival, Open Space, Pune, 2007
IAWRT IIC Asian Women's Film Festival, New Delhi, 2007
Reel Women International Film Festival, Los Angeles, 2006
Aaina Film Festival, Tasveer, Seattle, 2006

Grant
MCMA Creative Activity Grant, 2005

2007-04-12T10:43:00.021-07:00

Outside the Saying of It

Through conversation with an Iranian filmmaker, “Outside the Saying Of It” intimately conveys the messy matters of one person’s political dissent, military service, and American dreaming.

Genre: Documentary
Format: DV
Dur: 18 min
Year: 2005

Festivals
DNA Jaipur Film Festival, Jaipur, 2008
East Speaks, Here: Culture Unplugged Film Festival, 2008
SAVAC MONITOR 3, Toronto, 2007
New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival, New York, 2007
Ms. Films Festival, North Carolina, 2006