SchoolScapes

Inspired by the cinema of Lumière and the ideas of the 20th century Indian thinker Krishnamurti, David MacDougall explores in his new film a famous progressive school in South India, the Rishi Valley School. This is a film dedicated to the simple act of looking, in which each scene is a single shot.

Since completing the Doon School Quintet, his series of films about an elite boys’ boarding school in North India, MacDougall has turned his attention to other institutions for children in India. The coeducational Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh was founded on the educational principles espoused by Jiddu Krishnamurti, who stressed the importance of observing the world around us more calmly and simply, as if with fresh eyes. SchoolScapes was made in this spirit.

Awarded the 2007 Basil Wright Film Prize at the Royal Anthropological Institute International Festival of Ethnographic Film

“[The jury] were particularly taken with the formal rigour of SchoolScapes, its observational prowess, affinities to structural filmmaking, and rejection of the expository and narrative inclinations that continue to characterise almost everything that is still subsumed under the rubric of ethnographic and documentary film.”

Director, Camera, Editor, Sound:: David MacDougall
Production: Fieldwork Films/CCR MediaWork

Distribution:
Europe: Royal Anthropological Institute
North America: Berkeley Media LLC

Further program on the 21. 05. 2008:

19:00 Luc de Heusch - Wild Thinking

21:30 Room 11, Ethiopia Hotel