Chhattisgarh Sketches

An investigative video film that you cannot describe as a documentary and certainly not as a feature. Jon Jost, always a sensitive cameraman, has for years been a great advocate of working with digital video and now has an incomparable command of the technology. In this film, he allows his trained video eye to roam the colourful streets and landscapes of Chhattisgarh, a province in northeastern India. Jost gave workshops to students in Raipur and in addition made his own video excursions that certainly go a lot further than showing off or sightseeing, but did have a lot to do with that. Maybe it is most reminiscent of the quest of a painter for a motif. He records in watercolour what maybe one day will become an oil painting. And the video painter is conscious of the fact that the spontaneous sketches, made in amazement at the light and colour of the moment, are often the most beautiful and are seldom surpassed by the final painting, whatever that may be. The interventions in the material are sparse, but occasionally radical and effective. The images are sometimes slowed down to their most essential movement and the light and colours are often reduced to a single `stroke of watercolour’. (GjZ)