So begins a globe-trotting, decades-spanning docufiction essay on human-scale experience of monumental logistical phenomena, featuring small histories that unfold in the quiet shadows of History writ large. Teaming up with Kunming-born media theorist Mi You and Assam-based researcher Purav Goswami, Dutta contrasts the smooth international flow of goods today with increasing restrictions on people’s movement across borders. Her film reveals how lived realities of frontier populations have always been fluid and malleable, refusing the homogeneity demanded by cartographic political imagination. Appropriately, Dutta adopts a heterogeneous, genre-defying form, mixing interviews, archival material, performances, animation and musical numbers to craft a personal, wide-ranging work at once intimate and colossal.
For more information (in German only) and images, click here.
