MA Performance Central Saint Martins, UAL

Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi

Screen Screening 2

Thursday, June 11, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

A Dry Swim, by Jhin Zhang

REVIEW

A film which explores what paint would represent the colour of water amidst the story of love and the burgeoning queer identity of a young man. Therefore an expression and investigation of art and identity.

Throughout, the main protagonist runs his hands through the water, trying to catch it in his hands. He is trying to understand the basis of love as we learn from the story of the colour of the water and how his sister and her boyfriend got together, searching for the expression of its colour and visibility. A metaphor for how we try to find love in this universe, the yearning for love, the yearning to understand nature, to understand ourselves and our reflection in the water too. For the young man is a narcissus that looks many times into many mirrors of the water.

Why is the colour of the water love? Why does one want to represent love and the water, the water of love? The film says that this is the artistic spirit. It is the spirit of the creative, of the artist. These eyes are made to find love in this world.

There is an investigation of queer love as it is structurally connected to heterosexual love, as there is the love triangle between the artist, the sister and the brother (who is after the artist and not the sister). Queer love emerges from the heterosexual relationship between sister and artist. It is contrasted to heterosexual love which is accepted, while the queer love is kept secret, in the realm of fantasy. And therefore, this film is about sexual repression too.

SUMMARY

In a world shaped by near isolation, a boy grows within the intimate orbit of his older sister. The arrival of her boyfriend quietly unsettles this fragile balance. Between water and skin, gaze and distance, boundaries begin to soften. Sensations, desires, and a shifting sense of self drift in and out of form, like light across a surface. As proximity reshapes the space between them, the boy is slowly displaced — carried toward an elsewhere that feels both estranging and inevitable.

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Cast: Xiaodao, Juanbin Lei, Xiaojun, Flora Wang, Tianye, Evan Feng
Director: Jhin Zhang
Assistant Director: Eros Shen
Producer: Haoxu Yin
DOP: Jhin Zhang
Gaffer: Holly Duan
Production Designer: Dora Zheng
Stylist: Zaha Zhang
Sound designer: Yutong Chen

Happy Birthday, by Yilun Zheng

REVIEW

This film explores the pressure to look attractive. The protagonist is told by her mother on the day of her birthday that she will never be promoted if she does not wear make up like everyone else. She protests. She asks why she has to be judged on her looks and not on how hard she works.

While the young woman’s mother tells her that (visual) difference cannot be tolerated in this world, the film explores the young woman’s body and appearance through dance and choreography. Other women grab her and move her body around, signifying perhaps how constructions of gender orchestrate the body and its performance throughout society. The helplessness of the body as it is subjected to order.

The young woman cries as she rebels against the dicates of her mother to wear concealer. Is this the fate of those that rebel against the standards of beauty? The mother rubs the concealer onto her face. The body is subjected to beauty standards by other women, by the powerful. Is beauty the demand of power? And what is beauty? Is it just the demand of power?

The young woman asks the question, can I be judged by work rather than appearance? Is this possible in the world? A writer can ask this. They are not seen. An actor can ask this. They are seen. The judgement belongs to the viewer – has the acting been judged, rather than the attractiveness of the actor? Can the two be separated in a fair discernment?

SUMMARY

Happy Birthday is an experimental film exploring how contemporary systems of visibility and judgement shape identity and self-perception. Set between everyday life and surreal spaces, the film follows a woman gradually internalising external expectations through work, family, advertising, and social environments. The project reflects on the pressure to become socially acceptable and worthy of recognition within a culture built around observation and display.

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Cast: Tianhao Wang, Hongyun Wang, Yiqi Gu
Director: Yilun Zheng
Assistant Director:Xiaofan Ying
Producer: Menglin Yang
Director of Photography (DOP): Yikai Yan
Gaffer: Shangjia Li
Production Designer: Simeng Yu
Stylist: Jingyi Huang,Briony Wang
Choreographer: Briony Wang, Yijie
Sound Designer: Yilong Liu
Editor: Yilun Zheng

Fallacy, by Kangqiao Jiang

REVIEW

I suppose the question of this film is that if a woman were a colour, why is she the colour red? And how can one colour signify everything that is feminine? When the feminine is multiplicity itself, as is colour with its millions of hues. The film shows this by exploring different dimensions of a woman who is presented as different women and the colour red through different scenes which relay the association differently every time. Red is itself explored in liquid form in bottles, perhaps a symbol for its fluidity and defiance of reification even while the arbitrary limit of glass is being put upon it to attempt to shape it.

My intuition is that the film may be implicitly about the Western feminisation of China, which is also associated with the colour red. And that the aim of the film is to counter the reductiveness of this equation by exploring the diverse nuances of the colour.

SUMMARY

Fallacy is a visually driven experimental short film that explores how femininity is constructed, performed and gradually internalised within contemporary visual culture. The film revolves around the protagonist’s sustained gaze and exploration of ‘red’—a colour that, within mainstream aesthetics, has been reduced to a symbol of femininity, yet which constantly shifts and transforms within the imagery, oscillating between attraction and violence, intimacy and illusion. Through this visual thread, the work poses a question: when an individual’s sense of autonomy has partially internalised societal notions, how should one coexist with such a self?

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Lead Actress: Auguste Bartninkaite
Director/writer/editor: Kangqiao Jiang
DOP: Yuexiang Li
Art Director: Umi Shi
Producer: Luke Higgins
Gaffer: Vincent Liu
Sound Recorder: Ann Wang
Composer: Mavis Wong

She Who Writes Erotica, by Zixuan Wang

REVIEW

This was my favourite film of the night. It contained graphic descriptions of sex, postmodernist musings about the Mcguffin, about the fake and the real, the copy and the original, the reliable narrator and the unreliable narrator. It also explored themes of capitalism, friendship, writing and voice. Another major theme was about collaborative writing in an individualistic culture that seizes upon differences such as class and wealth to divide voices and representation.

The narrator constantly smoked throughout, perhaps to present herself as ‘a bad girl’. The rich woman is unable to partake of sexual pleasures while the woman with less wealth, we do not know whether she had any sex or not. So this could be interpreted as an investigation of female sexual repression and how it gives rise to erotica, fantasy, wish fulfillment and deception, while it destroys friendships and relationships in the process.

At one point, the protagonist says that financial struggle kills love. Whatever the audience may think of this statement, and I am sure that some will find it true for them, this epitomises the falsity of sexual repression and the thought of those in a capitalistic system. You can love without money. You can build a family without that much money. Nothing can kill love. Nothing can defeat love. And nothing can silence love. Love may be hard work, but it is possible. This is the philosophy of the poor from India.

SUMMARY

She Who Writes Erotica is a narrative short film exploring the shifting power dynamics within female friendship, desire, and class disparity. As novelist Lin and her friend Anna collaborate on a manuscript, the boundary between “raw” life and “refined” fiction begins to dissolve. When a luxury brooch exposes the economic chasm between them, their bond is tested through a game of intellectual mirrors. By utilizing the Female Gaze, the film deconstructs how consumerism alienates intimacy, ultimately questioning who possesses the true authority to narrate female pleasure.

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Cast: Zixuan Wang, Ting Shu
Director: Zixuan Wang
Screenwriter: Zixuan Wang
Producer: Zixuan Wang
DOP: Tairan Li
Camera Operator: Jiang Shan
First Assistant Camera: Peiye Gan
Gaffer: Wuxingchen Zhang
Production Sound Mixer: Chenhui Tang
Makeup Artist : Yinuo Wang
Art Director: Zixuan Wang
Supervising Art Director: Ge Wu
Sound Designer: Zixuan Wang
Editor: Zixuan Wang

MA Performance: Screen Screening 1 – Central Saint Martins, UAL

Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi

Platform Theatre, London, England

Wednesday, June 10 • 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM

My Mum has an Art Studio, by Zhang Jiaqi

MY REVIEW:

In India, the goddess of art and culture is Saraswati, a mother goddess. It is The Mother that gives inspiration and art. Similarly, this story sees the powerful figure of the mother as the instructor and enabler of creativity for a daughter that is suffering from creative fatigue.

The mother is shown as the greater voice of experience from an Asian culture which values and respects elders. She is also full of vitality, a quality that the daughter aspires to and therefore, one suspects, this is missing in her life. The mother seems to be the young one and not the daughter. The scene which clinches this impression is when the mother is encircled by a group of young dancers and dancers in the centre, entrancing all eyes with her energy. Therefore, just like the Mother Goddess, the Mother in the film is power. The power of creation. The film is the worship of The Mother, similar to Hindu religion.

The Mother’s studio was amazing, full of busts and plants, showing that she was one with nature. The daughter also describes the mother as amazingly beautiful, which invokes the Freudian idea of the desire for the mother too.

The mother’s role is set amidst a homecoming. Does the Mother represent China and its continuity of culture over thousands of years? Is there an idea that unity with the Motherland is the secret to creativity?

SUMMARY:

A daughter who hasn’t been home for years comes back exhausted and uncertain after graduation. Facing her first major life choice, she doubts if she should continue painting and struggles with reality.

At home, she notices her mother is different. The woman who always waited for her is now building her own life. In this gentle spring, they take a short but profound trip. The mother leads her to a hidden studio—a secret space she built for herself. During their time together, the daughter finally sees her mother’s persistence and growth, which helps her rethink her own path.

This is a journey of self-discovery and mutual understanding, a transformation for both mother and daughter. It is a homecoming and a rediscovery of the mother’s growth. In each other’s eyes, they show their true selves and complete a change of understanding and companionship.

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Cast:
Daughter: Junhuan Cheng
Mother: Jiahan Bu
Dancing guys: Lytia Liu, Argo, Cheryl Ding, Jingyi Yuan, Xinxin Zhang, Frank Liu, Guosheng Sun, Zeyang Li, Changxin Ma

Director and Screen Writer: Jiaqi Zhang
1st Assistant Director: Xinxin Zhang
Script Assistant: Argo
Director Assistants: Xiaoya Wang, Hanchao Yang
Production Manager: Cheryl Ding
Production Assistant: Jingyi Yuan
Production Runner: Changxin Ma
Director of Photography: Songming Cai
Focus Puller: Frank Liu
Camera Assistant: Kai Wang
Camera Technician: Jiqin Zhang
DIT: Liangyu Huang
Gaffer: Yuyang Chen
Lighting Assistants: Guosheng Sun, Changjun Zhou, Fengchun Yu
Production Designer: Sers Shi
Art Director: Runyu Li
Property Master: Hai Zhao
Art Production Assistants: Muyi Fu, Zile Wang
Sound Recorder: Zeyang Liu
Editor: Jiaqi Zhang
Colorist: Xilin Zhang
Sound Designer: Die Lai
Composer: Junwen Wu
Poster Designer: Jiaqi Zhang
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Berglas Effect, by Todd Chen

MY REVIEW:

This is an ambiguous meditation on the theme of domestic violence, which is what joins together all of the characters. Characters mirror each other in attempting to end domestic violence (against women), or attempting to revenge it. But their attempts culminate in murder itself, suggesting that there is no escape from violence (although feminist criticism might argue something very different here). In many ways, this is a comment upon human culture. There has always been an argument between peace and war, between violence and non-violence. The two are structurally connected, however much one tries to separate them. And in this sense, the film is a Derridean analysis of how much unites what is thought of as discrete. How there can be no separation.

The title refers to the sleights of hand and illusions that the film makers are creating with the script.

There were technical faults with this film which I am pointing out because these are students and therefore this is constructive criticism. One, the subtitles disappeared into the white at some points. I cannot understand (Chinese?) and therefore I missed some of the dialogue. Second, the face of the main character was blurred in a few scenes.

SUMMARY:

Berglas Effect is an attempt at a film creation in the suspense and crime genre with dark elements. This work depicts a series of consecutive tragedies triggered by domestic violence, in which three characters are drawn into the vortex due to their respective obsessions, and ultimately no one achieves true liberation.

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Cast: Zhang Xu, Wang Hu Lei Lei Ben Zhang

Director: Song Yan Ze & Chen Jia Cheng
Actor Assistant Director: Huang Yin Luo
Script Supervisor: Li Guan Yuan
Production Manager: Wu Si Rui
Director Of Photography: Williams Zhang
Gaffer: Zhu Yan Tao
Production Designer: Song Shao Pu
Art Director: Wan Jing Ning
Special Effects Makeup: Cheng Zhuo Ya
Recording Supervisor: Chen Yu Fan
Production Sound Mixer: Wang Tian Jiu
Editor: Zhang Peng
Sound Designer: Chen Ruo Jing Chen Yu Fan
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UPHILL, DOWNHILL, by Wenhan Qin

MY REVIEW:

This mountain is a metaphor for the uphill climb or struggle of life, and how one can get lost or disorientated within it. These youngsters climb the mountain to try and connect with the heavens, with alien life forms, with an advanced intelligence and the gods of the sky. However, they become lost. There is much pressure on them. They do not form that connection with the heavens that they so desperately want.

This is a young person’s idea of ambition. Ambition, however, should not be to connect with something greater, something that is not human. Ambition should be to connect to others, to one’s relations. In the film, the young man cannot connect with his mother. He ignores her phone calls and argues with her. It is relationships that ground us to this world, our origins that remind us who and what we are, where we are and where we are going.

Instead of asking strangers for help and thinking that they won’t just leave you to die (when that is what they will do, because you and everyone is expendable to them), and treating our nearest and our well-wishers as enemies, we have to accept that they expect things of us and we have to try our best to achieve those expectations. For our family and the ones that love us, we are not expendable. We are not just our careers. We are the ones that they love. And that should be enough. Why is it not enough? That is what you have to ask of this society.

SUMMARY:

A phone call from Xiao Xiu’s mother threatens to drag him back into a life he can no longer control. Desperate to escape, he retreats to an isolated mountain rumoured to receive mysterious signals. There, he encounters a young content creator and an obsessive inventor — each searching for a different kind of answer.

When one of them disappears, the mountain transforms from refuge into maze, filled with dead ends, unresolved choices, and a reality that keeps closing in.

UPHILL, DOWNHILL is a poetic film about young people stumbling through early adulthood — fleeing their fate, and anxiously hoping someone will show them the way.

–
Cast: Xiao Jiang, Huaiyi Zeng, Duo Hu
Director: Wenhan Qin
Assistant Director: Litao Li
DoP: Luyao Liu
B-Camera Operator: Peng Zhang
Focus Puller: Yazhou Cui, Chuandong Wang
Camera Assistant: Weizheng Li, Xiao Wang, MKX
Production Designer: Junyan Jiang
Art Assistant: Xiangcheng Wang
Sound Recordist: Jia Hu
Sound Assistant: Yongwei Zhang
Script Supervisor: Shiran Xu
Production Assistant: Dakang Lu
Still Photographer: Mingyuan Liu
Editor: Wenhan Qin

Thanks: Anne Beresford, Gabi Tropia
–

Last night, I dreamed I learned how to swim, by Yuyan Zhang

MY REVIEW:

Jealousy of the mother is apparent in this one, particularly the sexuality of the mother. The sexuality of the mother and modelling upon it is related to the burgeoning periods and sexuality of the teenager, suggesting that the film is possibly an examination of female role models in the construction of young girls and the firing off of mirror neurons in the brain and how these relate to vision (this is a film) and action.

The mother is also controlling. Therefore the expression of her sexuality is seen as a form of power perhaps. And this is why the young teenager is jealous and attempts to acquire that power for herself. One wonders what a feminist might make of this characterisation, that sex is power for women. Is this a stereotype? Or is the film debunking this stereotype?

The teenager is a spy and this is therefore about the construction of a scopic regime and surveillance, perhaps the idea of Foucauldian panopticism. The scene that is therefore of particular interest is when the young teenager cuts off the swimming costume that covers her whole body (like the panopticon) and exposes her body. There is the tension between exposure and revealing. The final ending has this too, when we are finally exposed to the sexual development of the daughter, although through the implicit rather than to the bodily. The aesthetic is revealing through concealing, showing through hiding, manifesting through veiling. I’m sure someone has written about this in terms of sexuality, that there is the dance between showing and telling.

SUMMARY:

Sixteen-year-old Xu Muze is forced by her mother into swimming class, anxious over her delayed first period. By chance, she sees her mother secretly dating the swimming coach and watches her become a different woman in a dance hall. Water mirrors her fear and longing. In a dream, she finally learns to swim, but can never catch up with her mother. She wakes to her first period. After seeing her mother, she truly sees herself for the first time.

–
Cast: Harmonie He, Jun Liu, Xiaobao Zhao, Benben 
Director: Yuyan Zhang 
1st Assistant Director: Qiren Xu
Script Assistant: Xinyi Li 
Production Manager: Diman Luo
1st Production Assistant: Tong Lv, Jiaying Wu
2nd Production Assistant: Yongqi Su, Zhuyue Hu 
Director Of Photography: Jiacheng Chen 
Camera Operator: Jeff Zhang
Focus Puller: Tuoran Li 
Gaffer: Shuhao Wang
Best Boy: Tianwei Bao
DIT: Yaokun Mo
 Art Director: Cong Le
Art Assistant: Ruimin Li 
Stylist: Xinjue Wu
Hair and Make-up: Xiaochen Zhu, Yanping Zhang, Yixin Chen 
Sound Recordist: Zhixuan Zhao
Boom Operator: Xiaoni Huang
 Sound Designer: Yufan Chen 
Colorist: Shiqi Sun
 Editor: Yuyan Zhang
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Puann-hì, by Ding Wei

MY REVIEW:

This one appears to be gauging the contest between Western drama exemplified by Medea and Chinese traditional art forms which are interlaced throughout. It is about the idea that acting is about courage, what it means to be a woman that is not docile and weak, to be able to speak up and express oneself.

This was the most technically beautiful film for me, with its choreography and dream-like sequences.

The film investigated the theme of domestic abuse and, moreover, the man was the powerful villain because he was the landlord and held the financial power. Therefore, one might see the film as an exposure of the patriarchy and its misogyny driven by feminism.

SUMMARY:

A Minnan girl named A-ning, who studies far from home, is rehearsing for a production of *Medea*. Returning home during the holidays, she finds her homeland both familiar and isolating, uncertain where she truly belongs. The struggles of real life often make her long to become a powerful woman like Medea in the play—but in Minnan, Medea is dismissed by her grandmother as a foolish and selfish woman. She can’t help but wonder: without a dragon-drawn chariot, without myth, what kind of “revenge” do we need in the 21st century?

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Cast: Faymin, Ding Yunchen, Huang Jiale, Li Weisi, Chen Xiufeng
Director: Ding Wei
Assistant Director: Li Yihan
Producer: Li Fan
UPM: Kilin Lin
DOP: Cai Songming
Camera Assistant: Jin Xiao
Puller: Huang Jinqi
Gaffer: Peng Junjie
Lighting Assistant: Tu Erqi
Production Designer: Fang Woni, Hu Jingtong
Art Assistant: Feng Yu
Stylist: Feng Yu
Sound Designer: Tang Chenhui
Sound Assistant: Peng Haiyun
Script Supervisor: Chen Yufei
Editor: Ding Wei
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Xiang Qian Kan Qi, by Cong Le

MY REVIEW:

Castration (the Freudian losing of the teeth) figures as a major theme here, perhaps the castration of the individual by the state, since we are talking about a performance for the nationalistic Olympics here. If castration is not about power, what is it about? It is a powerlessness imposed by the powerful, the oppressors in the state that control representation. This was perhaps the essence of the body horror that we saw here, the hair cutting, the teeth being pulled out, even the contortionism of the heroine.

This was the most lavishly shot out of all the films which made me wonder how the budget was so big! The choreography made the film very beautiful.

This film seemed to be about the idea of disappearance in the body. Teeth disappearing. The body of the heroine disappearing. The lack that the state creates in the body…

SUMMARY:

Amid the Olympic fever of 2008, in a dance troupe with a strict hierarchy, the girls were compared, selected and replaced amid the undercurrents of competition. Qianqian tried hard to fit in with the rules, but the honour she eventually gained was to completely disappear from the most dazzling stage.

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Cast: Xuanyu Zhang, Xuanyushan He, Peixin Li
Director/Writer: Cong Le
1st Assistant Director: Zhiyuan Li
2nd Assistant Director: Yuyan Zhang
Script Supervisor: Yi Lu
Choreographer: Xinyi Du, Jiayi Ding
Unit Production Manager: Fujiwara Kai
1St Production Assistant: Siyu Chen, Yujing Yang
Director Of Photography: Yinghai Hu
Focus Puller: Shiyong Li
1st Assistant Camera: Yingqiang Liu
Gaffer: Jun Yuan
Best Boy: Fadong Li, Zongyang Duan, Qun Yuan
Digital Imaging Technician: Ziwei Goh
Art Director: Zifan Wang
Prop: Fei Gao, Hui Tian, Chaochao Zheng, Zhenjiang Lu, Hongling Zhao
Costume Designer: Haoying Zhang
Stylist: Zhao Chen
Hair And Make-up: Zhiyang Li, Zeyu Wang, Yixuan Zuo
Sound Designer: Yiran Ma, Zikang Wang
Sound Mixer: Zikang Wang
Boom Operator: Yehan Li
Composer: Monstar Cao, Yiran Ma
Editor: Cong Le
Colorist: Shangbai Jiang

The Rise of the Anti-Mother and Anti-Son Film and Western Law

13.05.2026

SPOILER ALERTS

Coming from a society that worships The Mother, where the duty is to be the son and lover of The Mother, I have written before about how the traditional Indian film has protested against the sexual repression of the West and its law which is based on an Asian Mother phobia. This phobia of the Asian mother reveals that The Mother is the Other to Western law, which is misogynistic and fears maternal or feminine authority. https://cafedissensus.wordpress.com/2022/05/30/there-is-no-bad-mother-beta-and-the-indian-mother-law-against-the-wests-asian-mother-phobia/

More and more, as I watch current films and watch current movies, I am learning just how far this misogyny and phobia of the mother goes in Western culture, or its unconscious legal culture. I am currently reading the Skandar the Unicorn books. The author worked in the law. Guess who is the villain in the first two books (I have only just begun the second one)? It is The Mother.

I watched ‘Polite Society’ the other day. Aside from the usual racism in these films about British Asian people – i.e. the British Asian man can never get married in these films because ‘there is something wrong with him’, guess who was the villain? It was The Mother. And the film spent all of its time making the mother/son bond loathsome as well through the eyes of the spoilt and Westernised British Asian female in it that seemed to hate the culture of the older generation.

Today I watched ‘Mardaani 3’, a cop film. Guess who was the villain? You guessed it. The character that was named ‘Amma’, or The Mother. And guess what? The Asian man in the film was also a villain because of the maternal relationship between himself and The Mother.

Mardaani 3 is worth analysing. The Mother comes from a poor family and has a Haryanvi dialect accent which suggests the rural. While no one is saying that she is a good character, because she is a child trafficker, the point is how the law in the form of the film’s heroine finishes her. She is shot in the throat. And then, when she can’t answer back, and the law has silenced the voice of this poor woman, the heroine of the film gives a big monologue. Same with the son. He comes from the poor. And he is also silenced when he is finished. The whole point of these films is to silence the poor Mother and the son that loves her and protects her.

Why am I talking about Indian films alongside British Asian films and British Literature? Because India was colonised and Western law was forced on us. This misogyny comes from the West. However, there are still sons that come from poor mothers. I am one of them. We will not accept this misogyny because we have sworn to protect our mothers. I represent the Indian national movement. I was named after the son that married Mother India. Against the hatred of The Mother and this legal culture, we stand for dharma, the organic law of India. I have modelled myself on my mother, the poor, foreign woman. The poor Indian woman. I am her voice. Even when the whole of this Western culture and its law is against us, wants to silence us. Because as I have written before, the dharma is the Mother-Law. We will never stop worshipping The Mother. Just like The Dark Mother stood as a symbol of Revolution against the Imperialists, so we still stand. We are the rivals of the oppressions and injustices of the Western law, its marginalisations and suppressions. Jai Maa Kaali!

living with profound despair

04.05.2026

S: I woke up again from another nightmare in the supermarket, the supermarketisation of art and culture, the meanness of the philistines in this world. And as I lay in bed thinking over things, this is what came into my head. There is this line in this movie ‘Gadar’ (Rebellion/Mutiny/Revolt) that I think about over and over again.

A: The film goer. Which is?

S: Let me tell you the story of this film. It is based on a true story. A Sikh man fell in love with a Muslim woman. He married her and had children with her. The partition separated them. Her parents broke up the marriage. He committed suicide.

A: He kills himself?

S: In real life. In the movie, he does not kill himself. He wins her back.

A: So, tell me this line that you obsessively return to.

S: The scene in the film is that the two lovers are going to be separated. They have only just fallen in love. They are talking. He is suffering from the pain of separation already. And he says to her, ‘No matter how merciless this life is, you still have to live it.’

A: This is the line that you think about? There is no elegance or poetry to it.

S: Is it not the whole message of the film? The whole point of the film? In the film, he is to live. Whereas in this brutal and merciless world, he is made to die through its hostility to love and diversity, to an interfaith marriage, to the embrace of difference, to harmony and unity across cultures. In the film he is given his happiness.

A: You love the fairy tale even knowing the reality.

S: You live for your ideals. The ideals of India are the embrace of difference. The actor in the film, Sunny Deol, he is me. I have modelled myself upon the hero of Punjab.

A: It is easier said than done to live through despair.

S: When you are the hero, your duty is to live. In this spiritual war, it is our duty to not only survive but to prosper. Even when you dream of death, you make plans to live. Because we are love. And we keep love alive in this mean and cheap world.

A: You that has nightmares every night, you that has separated yourself from every community, you preach love and life?

S: To stomach injustice is to become unjust. To live with those that cheapen life is not life. To live with those that devalue love, that is not life. It takes courage to separate yourself from communities for the ideals of love and life. I have that courage. I can stand all alone in this world. I have lived through profound despair. And despite everything, still I laugh. I make a life. I love. I was born to be a hero. It is what I am named after, this Sikh hero Sunil Dutt that married a Muslim woman and saved her life, just like in the film Gadar. She is Mother India and I was raised to protect her honour. The story of Gadar is the story of my life. Why? Because I am Punjab. I am India. And this film that we are talking about? It is the most watched film in modern Indian history. All of India loves me. Because I am India. I am Punjab. I am The Tiger. I am love.

the energy of the master of the field

25.04.2026

A beautiful day apparent, and it being my day off, Alfonso and I had arranged a programme of events for the day. I met him at his house first thing in the beautiful sunshine and we walked through the park reflecting on life and everything.

Our first stop was a mission of charity. We were going to see our friend in the hospital through the park. Alfonso had bought a comb at his request and we had picked it up from the chemist’s in the corner. I had begun joking around there and suggested to the cashiers that he was starting up his hair stylist business which had aroused a few smirks and then some conversation from the old lady that was sitting there waiting for her medicines. The visit in the hospital had not gone very smoothly but then our mutual friend was not very well and was having a bad day. We had told him that we would see him next week at the close of about half an hour.

We walked again back through the park and again to Alfonso’s house where he made himself some coffee and tea while I gulped down some water. The first stop was a woman’s brass band that was playing in Holy Sepulchre church in Holborn Viaduct. We then set out for a poster exhibition which was about politics, democracy and resistance in the Eastern bloc at Europe House. Alfonso was older than me and had lived through the events in the late eighties and nineties so he was teaching me about them while I made some comments about the aesthetics, intentions and meanings of the posters.

We decided to walk to St James’s park which was in the vicinity afterwards and ended up in the Institute of Contemporary Arts which had a 1K challenge to promote Puma trainers. We realised that we could pick up some free running T-shirts if we collected a few stamps so we did so.

Having gone through a day of medicine, music, art, politics and sport, we then settled back down into Alfonso’s house after buying much reduced price chocolate in the form of Easter eggs and then watched the film ‘The King’, which was a creepy thriller about Christianity and its interaction with the military minded and violence.

According to Alfonso, the film was about revenge. Alfonso asked me how it contrasted with the film I had watched recently, Dhurandhar: The Revenge, ‘The Master of the Field’.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the difference can be encapsulated in one cinematic moment. The hero is rescuing his sister who has been gang raped. He kills everyone. We have a scene where he disappears from the camera. Then he rises. His head is brought up to a whirling circular firework behind him. We focus on his face. It is the face of his revenge. Why the firework? In the film, they talk about the energy that is required to have revenge. The hero says that not all have this energy. He is the firework. The revenge is within him. It is a whirling circle of energy. Whereas in The King, the anti-hero is silent and evil, seemingly low in all energy except for sexual energy, low-key and understated, in the Hindi film the hero is full of energy. In fact, the actor Ranveer Singh is known for his energy. In fact, he is Punjabi and we are known for our energy. The whirling firework becomes a halo around his head. It represents the energy of the Sikhs, because he is a Sikh in the film and in real life. He is a hero, a guru. The energy is full of light and power, it is dazzling. It is the splendour of Punjab. The firework is fire. Fire which will burn the world. Fire which is full of the sparks that will ignite this world. That is the difference between ‘The King’ and ‘The Master of the Field’. It is a difference in power. The Punjabi is powerful. The Tiger is powerful. We have endless energy which illuminates and burns this world, this energy of revenge. And remember the last thing. The energy is the law: it is the wheel of the dharma. It is the beauty of law.’

the worship of anger and the master of the field

27.03.2026

S: Recently, Imran Khan, a failed actor with no good films of his own and, really, a non-entity in Hindi film who was there because of his famous uncle, criticised Ranveer Singh, the hero of Dhurandhar 2 (‘The Master of the Field’). Khan said that he didn’t want to do any films portraying an angry man and this version of masculinity.

A: Thoughts? Are we preparing for another diatribe?

S: The thought is that we get all these people that are against anger. It is their culture. They want to kill anger. They think they are better than other people because they don’t have anger. They act like anger is a false emotion. In fact, anger is the most real of the emotions.

A: Proof?

S: Look at the Christian idea that you should turn the other cheek. And I remember reading a summary of a book that said the ancient writers all talked about expelling anger from the collective psyche. There is a conspiracy against anger.

A: People do not worship anger like you do.

S: I do worship anger. I worship the Dark Mother, Maa Kaali. Whose bloodlust is uncontrollable.

A: Why?

S: Do you know why The Mother has four arms? Because she is strength personified. Anger gives you energy. In the film that Imran Khan mocked, Ranveer Singh (a fellow Punjabi) says that not everyone can attain revenge. For revenge you have to have courage and energy. That’s what the film says. It is anger that gives you energy.

A: Proof?

S: Look at me. I am motivated by rage. Absolute rage. A rage that is unthinkable in this society. I got up after three or so years of debilitating illness because the Mother Goddess, Maa Kaali came to me. To get my revenge. I do seven paid jobs, more volunteering work on top of that, university study, a girlfriend, family commitments including mentoring and teaching my nephew. It is driven by absolute rage. The energy of anger. The energy of the Revolutionary.

A: You are Dhurandhar? The Master of the Field?

S: If it is not the Punjabi Tiger, who is it then? Certainly not Imran Khan. He can go back to his non-existence as an actor. India has rejected him. Me? They have accepted. I am their hero.

border 2 – the martyr inspires courage and not fear

17.02.2025

S: He is back with a bang, my screen idol, Sunny Deol. The Punjabi actor that is me and I am him.

A: He acts. You live.

S: Whatever he is off screen, on the screen he is the ideal of Punjab. He is The Tiger. He is The Voice. He is Anger. And he is Justice.

A: So, I take it you watched Border 2?

S: In this film is the philosophy of the Punjabi. That the warrior is first and foremost a lover. He fights because he is full of love. And the army? It works because of love. Each man is a brother. He is full of love for his brother.

A: This film glorifies war.

S: Does it? It shows the sacrifices that you have to make for war. It shows why you have to protect the people. Because of love. There are those that would rule the world with this oppression. There has to be a man to fight them. The hero. Counting on others to do the right thing always leads to the wrong results.

A: What is the most striking moment of this film?

S: There are many. When the dead man calls on the power of The Mother to fight the enemy. Durga, the Invincible, The Mother Queen. The one I think of the most is when the enemies taunt my hero Sunny Deol. They have killed his only son who was also in the Indian army. They tell him that they will kill him just like they butchered his child. Sunny Deol is silent. He seems defeated. Then we hear the roar of The Tiger. Sunny Deol explodes. He tells them that he will kill them. He tells them that the martyr inspires courage and not fear.

A: You think about this?

S: Does it surprise you? Is it not strange? Instead of fearing death, the hero charges towards it. Instead of saving himself, he saves the world. When he thinks of the dead soldier, he thinks about revenge for the dead soldier. That is the mark of the hero. That is why I am Sunny Deol. Because I run into the face of danger. Because the martyr does not fill me with fear but with courage.

A: You are in love with death.

S: In this death there is glory. We come from the honour culture. The highest honour is that of the warrior, the one that fights to protect Mother Earth and The People.

A: Instead of controlling and managing your anger, you venerate it. You worship revenge.

S: I worship The Dark Mother. She was filled with bloodlust for her enemies. She was uncontrollable. She wiped off sin from the face of the world. We come from the revenge culture. We are Punjabi. Touch one of us and there will be hell to pay. In the film, they say that if they kill thousands of Indians, then we will run away because we are cowards. They give them the answer. If you kill our men all of India will come for payback.

fear (microfiction)

16.11.2025

S: You are asking me if I feel fear?

A: Yes.

S: Never in a fight.

A: Which means that you do feel fear. When you are not in a fight.

S: The conscious mind you can control. Not the unconscious.

A: What do you mean?

S: The nightmares. The fears that your conscious mind cannot acknowledge.

A: And? Anything else?

S: There is one fear that everyone has. You cannot escape it.

A: And what is that?

S: That the ones you love will die. That they will leave you all alone in this world. You will have to look upon the ugliness of their corpses. Naked death dancing through the world in all of her obscenity.

A: Why obscenity? Death is natural. Some think death is peace. Liberation from this unliveable world that the living have made within it. Accept death.

S: In the film ‘Sholay’, Thakkur comes back to his home. There is silence outside the station. Along the floor, there are bodies strewn about, covered in white sheets. Nobody says anything. He walks and lifts the covered sheets from the bodies. He looks death in the face. It is the entirety of his family. The last one, it is the body of his beloved grandson. The death of the innocent. The children…

A: Why are you talking about this scene?

S: Because the face of Thakkur when he sees the body of his grandson haunts me. It is full of grief. But more so than grief, with rage.

A: Why are you haunted?

S: Because this is what we look at as Indians. This is what we look at in this generation. They are killing our Indian children. The villain that kills Thakkur’s family is Gabbar, who stands for arrogance, (which is what his name means), selfishness and greed. They are killing us and ours with Gabbar’s qualities. I am watching six thousand years of Indian civilisation being ended in just one generation with greed, selfishness and arrogance. I am staring at death with rage, like Thakkur. The family is what makes us us. I am looking at the death of the family.

A: They live.

S: They are corpses that have motion. And to look upon them is to grieve India. Thakkur’s grief is the story of ‘Sholay’ and us all. Because Thakkur has seen what we all fear.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila, “The Power of Trees”

Exhibition at Kew Gardens Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art

Running from April 12 to September 14, 2025

Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi (first version of an exhibition review for Plantcurator.com)

Images courtesy of Kew Gardens.

What is a portrait of a tree? And what can such a portrait do? What can a tree portrait tell us about ourselves as humans and our systems of representing ourselves and nature? These are some of the questions behind the Finnish visual artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s exhibition ‘The Power of Trees’ at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art at Kew Gardens.

The Power of Trees. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Power of Trees invites visitors to explore the enduring beauty of trees across art and culture.

A prominent – and spectacular – piece in the exhibition Ahtila’s Horizontal–Vaakasuora offers the living video portrait of a 30-metre-tall spruce in Finland’s boreal forest. The tree is shown as a sublime horizontal, subverting our intuitive perceptions of how to portray a tree and highlighting how the limitations of the film frame can shape understanding since the tree could not be captured as a great vertical but had to be rendered horizontally to capture its majesty.

Alongside the installation are Ahtila’s preparatory works, Anthropomorphic Exercises in Film, which are going to be seen for the first time in the country at Kew. Anthropomorphic Exercises in Film are a series of sketches which cast the trees as human characters in movie scenes. The conception is to foreground and analyse our human ways of seeing through film, one of the forms of representation that dominate our understanding of the world around us.

What I found to be an especially stimulating artwork is Point of View/With a Human. There is a step and in front of it, there are three sections on the tree. The fourth section at the top is a mirror in which we look into. Is this artwork a ladder of the tree into the self? The tree as a spiritual guide for the recognition of the self? Or (even at the same time), a puncturing of human arrogance as you step to look at your face in the top branches of the tree? An insight that our sight and our vision of nature is based on narcissism and ego? That we can we only see ourselves in nature? Nature as ourselves?

Finnish art has traditionally been preoccupied with fragments rather than wholes as we learn from the exhibition curatorial note. What is the artwork saying about human beings as a fragment of nature, as part of nature’s collection of fragments? The fragmented self of human beings in the world of nature?

I found Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s exhibition “The Power of Trees” to be a very well conceptualised thought experiment into how we represent the outside world of nature, but also how we represent the inner world of ourselves through filmic representations. How a portrait and character is built. It is an art of the tree that allows us to know ourselves and the limitations and fabrications of our self-knowledge. The exhibition is playful, earnest, important and stimulating and worth not just one, but repeated visits to tease out its subtlety. After you see it, when you look next at at tree in art, you will definitely look at it differently. And perhaps at yourself too.

The Indian Vocabulary of Love and its Meaning

14.01.2024

I’ve been watching Hindi films since I was a child. It is how I learnt to speak Hindi (my language at home – my mother tongue – is Punjabi, not Hindi). Hindi speakers have many words for love. Not like English speakers. Here are some – Ishq, Aashiqi, Mohabbat, Pyaar, Prem, Lagan, Chaahat… There’s probably more. Hindi is a rich language.

Here are some more metaphorical ones, which touch on some of the ways that love is experienced and conceptualised in Indian culture:

Ibaadat – Worship. When you love someone, you love them like a god or a goddess. They are important, powerful, masterful over you. They rule over your heart. They take the place of a god or a goddess, commanding all your loyalty and faith. You trust them without question. You hope everything from them.

Aetbaar – Belief. When you trust them with your heart. You can rely on them without question. They are the one person in the whole world that you can count on the most to stay with you through thick and thin. You expect everything from them, total commitment.

Wafaa – They hold your loyalty. You will never stray from them. The trust and the bond between you is unshakeable.

Behosh/Mere hosh udhgayee – Unconscious/My senses have flown – How love is experienced. Your mind goes on a holiday when you see them, think about them, are around them. They command all your attention. You can’t focus on anything else.

Amaanat – They say that your lover (usually a woman) is your ‘amaanat’ (‘thing or property committed to the trust and care of a person or group of persons’ – https://rekhtadictionary.com/meaning-of-amaanat?lang=hi ) A red flag for Western feminists, but indicates the possessiveness that a lover will have over their sweetheart – and even in English, you still say to someone ‘You are mine’ or ‘You are my girlfriend’.

Here are some terms of endearment which further indicate what love means in Indian culture:

Jaanu/Janaam/Jaaneman – ‘My Life’. Love is for life. Your lover is your life. They are everything for you and they are for you forever, like your own life. They are precious like your life.

Mitwa/Yaar – ‘Friend’. Indian culture does not make a distinction between friendship and love between a man and a woman in this term. Which perhaps indicates the truth – that your lover is your best friend.

Humraaz – Someone who has the same secrets as you – you share your secrets with them. You trust them. They are the only ones you can share your most personal thoughts with.

Humnava/Humsafar – Someone who is a fellow traveller through life’s journey with you (the ‘ride or die’ chick). You are committed to the same journey. You have the same mission in life.

Humdum – Someone who has the same life force/breath (‘dum’) as you, your soulmate, someone who is the other part of yourself. The sense of connection, of seeing yourself in them.

Humdard – Someone who shares the same pain as you, because you are so connected. What you feel, they feel. They are the mirrors of you and you are the mirror of them (love’s mirror).

Huzoor – Master – they rule over you because you love them. And you accept their sovereignty over you.

Deewana – Crazy one – because you go crazy in love for someone.

See more terms of endearment from the Hindi movies here:

150 Urdu-Hindi Terms of Endearment To Call Your Lover This Valentine’s Day