21 Chitrakoot

21 Chitrakoot

Production country: 
in
Year: 
2012
Duration: 
9'
Edition: 
2017
Format: 
film/video

A land, as ancient and ideal as nature, is called up through the chroma-key backdrops of a popular 1980s Indian mythological TV show.

"21 Chitrakoot is, in its simplest terms, Shambhavi Kaul's exploration of chroma-key, that misbegotten late-70s TV technology that slaps fake, wavering backgrounds behind hapless screen-actors, positioned in front of a blue screen. Nowadays this tool is restricted to weather maps, but Kaul shows its broader, more egregious uses—fake exotic transport, chintzy location shoots, and the quick blending or reversal of onscreen entities. But part of what makes 21 Chitrakoot more than just a silly riff on an outdated technology is the fact that Kaul combines it with another lingering, half-dead relic from the not-so-recent past: Orientalism." (Michael Sicinski)

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