“We started off with the works of Sudhir, who has been documenting urban life for a long time. It was a mill worker who found him and raised him.P.“We started filming Saacha in 2000 and completed it in 2001,” says Anjali. Power. That is our attitude towards them,” says Jayasankar.tiss. As filmmakers, who have been living in this city for a long time, we wanted to chronicle that. He was abandoned as a child. Sound. at the Tate Modern, London, in 2013; and at Khoj, New Delhi, in 2014. Because mills ran for 24 hours, and there were people and food outlets on streets day and night,” he adds. “For the biennale, we just technically enhanced the film. Then, we came across Narayan, whose poems are direct and powerful. Narayan was not very educated, but went on to become one of the most popular Marathi poets.edu.

Saacha is exhibited at the first floor of Aspinwall House, Fort Kochi. His words reflect the same theme, but from a different vantage point,” says Anjali, while Jayasankar adds, “He was part of the working class culture.An adaptation of Saacha was an installation at the art exhibition Project Space: Word.Saacha is just one element of the couple’s efforts towards this issue. Once the mills shut down, it led to the erosion of that way of life. A culture had been formed around those mills. At one side, we see workers travelling on a train; the other side shows concrete jungle that came later. JayasankarAnjali Monteiro and K.P. And, the situation goes on even now, which makes their work relevant even after all these years. At the biennale, the film is exhibited along with poems of Narayan Surve, a renowned Marathi poet, and paintings of popular artist Sudhir Patwardhan that rhyme with the theme. Jayasankar moved to Mumbai (then Bombay) in the early 70s. These experiences led the filmmaker couple to create Saacha, a 49-minute film on migrant life in Mumbai, which is on display at the ongoing Kochi Muziris Biennale.

And, vibrant, thought-provoking music has always been a part of the Leftist movement.”Words, images and music form the crux of Saacha, which uses loom as a metaphor. Both Anjali and Jayasankar are professors at School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute functional fabric of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and are documentary makers and authors. Thus Saacha happened,” explains Anjali.Saacha further tells us how a community that contributed to the growth of Mumbai was marginalised by other forces that overtook their space. Hence, it is used as the metaphor here,” says Anjali.”Sudhir Patwardhan’s paintings show two faces of MumbaiEnglish and Malayalam translations of his poem are plastered on the walls for visitors. “Kerala is a classic example of migrant force. Rest of their research materials is available on millmumbai.