Kamakshi

***

Reviewed by: Andrew Robertson

Kamakshi
"Executed crisply it raises more questions than it should consider answering."

The opening credits are a lurid mixture of reds and yellows on a black background, the English in a font that's reminiscent of badly translated action movies, vertically presented, nigh illegible. It creates a very specific sense of time and place but not one that's recognisable, like a newspaper dated for the 41st of Brutus. Over the top we hear a woman and a man in heated conversation, but that too is not a clue, strong language, raised voices, a specific moment shorn of context.

What follows is a landscape - a clay pot falls, unheeded, from the back of a cart, drily smashing on the baked surface of the road. A woman, a girl, a recalcitrant horse. A hole, or a space now-filled where a hole will be. What time is it? What is time? Is it time?

Copy picture

There are moments crisp and stark and captivating - heptagonal tokens drawn from a hiding place, a boat that is at once upright and rendered inverted by the water stored in its unsunk hull, a gnawing and clawing at the earth, the sudden return of colour.

Those questions again - what time is it? What is time? Is it time? Is it worth your time? To that last one, and others, perhaps. Executed crisply it raises more questions than it should consider answering, and in the creation of mystery achieves something intriguing, not quite fabulous.

Reviewed on: 20 Mar 2016
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An elderly woman digs a well with the help of her horse.

Director: Satindar Singh Bedi

Starring: Parvathi Limbaji Suryavanshi, Snehal

Year: 2015

Runtime: 25 minutes

Country: India

Festivals:

GSFF 2016

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