King of Dreams
INDIA / 2001 / English / Color / Video / 30 min
Director, Script, Narrator, Producer: Amar Kanwar
Photography: Dilip Varma, Ranjan Palit
Editing: Sameera Jain
Sound: Sunder
Music: Mohit Chauhan, Kem Trivedi
Production Company, Source: A.K. Productions
N 14 A Saket, New Delhi 110017 INDIA
Phone: 91-11-6516088 Fax: 91-11-6513556
E-mail: amarvg@del3.vsnl.net.in
A reflection on male sexuality and desire. The perfect matching of sensual image, sound, and introspective commentary give rise to a multitude of identities wrapped around a single search for the king of all dreams. A moment of impulse, a gentle glance, blood crimson red, milky semen... Seamless fragments of one obsession, myriad moments are ensconced within the folds of a dark and fleeting dream. Amar Kanwar’s A Season Outside was screened in New Asian Currents at YIDFF ’99.
[Director’s Statement] Most of life is like walking on a thin line, everything out of control and yet precariously one walks in a semblance of normalcy.
King of Dreams took about two years to make and was a big risk and experiment for me. How do you make a film about sex, about physical penetration, about desire and obsession? I did not want to spill people’s guts out, enter real lives and open wounds... no pity, no guilt, no autobiographical wallowing, no dramatic untold story... and yet this also had to be a story about love and power, gentleness and brutality, pain and justice.
How to represent on film secret moments and scattered thoughts of different individuals and experiences? Each thought with its own picture, each picture with its own offspring, seemingly unconnected vectors but also making sense when together... just like in real life. Is it possible to construct on film multiple territories for diverse audiences?
Several intimate zones were entered and exited in the search for the one thin line that ran through many different identities... trying to create a simple story where we all can find little spaces that are hidden within us.
Amar Kanwar
An independent documentary filmmaker working from New Delhi, India for the last ten years. Has directed several documentaries for broadcast in this period and worked on issues of health, ecology, labor, politics, and education. A Season Outside was awarded the Golden Gate Award at the 1999 San Francisco International Film Festival and the Golden Conch at the Mumbai International Documentary Film Festival. Recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship for 1998, he used the fellowship to support this film. |