Completed - ENGLISH, FRENCH - Documentary - 64 minutes
A portrait of India in words and songs
Year of production : 2010 Director(s) : Vijay SINGH Writer(s) : Vijay SINGH Producer(s) : Mandakini NARAIN (SILHOUETTE FILMS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED)
Historian-writer-director Vijay Singh’s latest film is an entertaining multi-layered portrait of India since its independence from the British in 1947 to the contemporary times. Woven around a long road journey across the country, India by Song brings together history, colourful Bollywood song clips, live testimonies and beautiful images of today’s India to deliver a gripping work of cinema. The film fuses history and cinema so seamlessly that we see dancing and singing actresses, thinkers, domestic maids, farmers and cricketers roll in and out of frames and dissolve into each other imperceptibly.India by Song uses testimonies of historical actors known or unknown, speaking to renowned thinkers like Romila Thapar and NR Narayana Murthy, and to anonymous witnesses of history such as Anjali, a domestic maid in Bombay who recounts her life in the times of globalisation.Vijay Singh uses song clips in the film less to illustrate their connection with historical reality than to show the inner world of emotions that inhabited the people of those times.Supported by a thought-provoking yet seemingly simple historical narration and a tasteful use of music, India by Song is as much a portrait of contemporary India as indeed of the Bombay film songs, which reveal ever so vividly the changing body language of love and romance over the decades.
Country(ies) : INDIA, FRANCE
Montréal World FF 2011