Freedom in the broadest possible sense is the subject of the Freedom Lecture, a quarterly initiative by arts and debating centre De Balie. For the fourth time now, the lecture is being organised in cooperation with IFFR. The speaker in this edition of the festival is video, performance and installation artist Pallavi Paul, whose film The Blind Rabbitis also included in the Short & Mid-length selection.
Pallavi Paul’s interdisciplinary work has been shown at various art exhibitions and film festivals, including London’s Tate Modern, the Contour Biennale in Mechelen and Savvy Contemporary in Berlin. Paul mixes fiction and non-fiction in a poetic exploration of cultural and social history, raising questions covering the intersections of speculation, factuality and proof. In her latest film, The Blind Rabbit, she applies this technique to a phenomenon that occurs in changing forms and at irregular intervals in her hometown of New Delhi: police brutality. On the basis of a number of isolated cases from the history of India as a relatively young democracy, the film focusses not so much on the events themselves, but on how this form of state oppression is systematically hidden from view. Making use of snippets of documentation that have evaded the censor, Paul throws a light on the disruptive effects and instrumental nature of this strategy for repression.
In the Freedom Lecture, Paul will take her own biography and oeuvre as the starting point for a reflection on freedom and resistance. The Freedom Lecture is made possible thanks to Democracy and Media Foundation.
