Amit Dutta

Rhythm of a Flower (2024)

Kumar Gandharav, a child prodigy who subsequently became one of the finest and most original geniuses of Indian classical music, was struck by tuberculosis at the height of his abilities. For years, he lay in bed, barred from using his lungs, unsure if he ...

The Many Interrupted Dreams of Mr. Hemmady (2024)

The Many Interrupted Dreams of Mr. Hemmady explores the unintentional and fantastical narratives contained within matchbox art, delving into the interplay of dreams, desires, and histories, presenting them as a chaotic yet meaningful mosaic of knowledge an ...

The Lesson (2024)

This short-film was made by Amit Dutta to encapsulate some essential teachings of Kashmir Shaivism as taught by Bettina Sharada Baeumer. The film was shot at Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Shimla) in 2016. ...

Haren Das: 21 Studies of Life in Sound and Silence – Movement and Stillness (2023)

In Haren Das: 21 Studies of Life, Amit Dutta portrays the remarkable ability to infuse static images with vivid life, giving an immersive experience to Das's printmaking, wood engravings, etching, and linocut, used to capture landscapes, seascapes, and flo ...

A Thousand Colours of Jamini Roy (2023)

A film on the art of the revered Indian painter Jamini Roy (1887-1972). Could we reach out to nature through his seemingly flat colours and establish the diversity in this uniformity? A Thousand Colours of Jamini Roy explores the intricate world of modern ...

Touch Air (2023)

An homage to the influential practice and philosophy of artist Nasreen Mohamedi. The film incorporates Mohamedi's personal notes and her unique singular vision, drawing upon the aesthetics of the bare line, and its metaphysical journey eliminating physical ...

Blueprint of a Pleasure Machine (2023)

Bat like Devil Chaser with a Top Hat (2022)

Culled from over 5,000 photographs by Jyoti Bhatt (b. 1934) from the collection of Bengaluru's Museum of Art and Photography, this short film pays respect to an artist whose body of work is a portrait of the Indian nation and offers a poetic visual and son ...

Abhagir Swargo (2022)

In 'Abhagir Swargo' the mother Abhaghi is a lower caste woman, whose only dream was that after her death she should be cremated with full rituals like the high-caste Hindus. She dies in penury and his son went further into the debt trap to fulfill his moth ...

Mother, Who Will Weave Now? (2022)

Mother, Who Will Weave Now? attempts to sample and mirror the grand tapestry of Indian textile tradition and history by interweaving snippets of Indian cloth on an editing table, using the poetic meters of classical Indian literature sewn together with the ...

The Scent of Earth (2021)

A nostalgic tale about childhood bazaars, scents and smells. ...

If I go, where do I go? (2021)

Dutta's new feature finds Hindi experimental writer Krishna Baldev Vaid (1927–2020)—who was born in what is now Pakistan and migrated to India during Partition—living with his daughter in a small apartment in New York. "At ninety-one, after a lifetim ...

The Game of Shifting Mirrors (2020)

How do the vicissitudes of contemporary notions of nationhood alter our relationship with cultural patrimony? It's a question obliquely suggested by Amit Dutta's latest film. As a camera explores the architecture of a museum, we hear a description of a pai ...

Wittgenstein Plays Chess with Marcel Duchamp, or How Not to Do Philosophy (2020)

The project attempts to push the boundaries of cinema by juxtaposing it with ideas from philosophy, visual art, chess, mathematics, geometry, linguistics and psychology ...

Tape 39 (2020)

Jangarh Singh Shyam, a famous Indian artist born in an isolated tribal village, committed suicide in a Japanese museum in 2001. I found on an old MiniDV tape the images of a trip I had undertaken in 2008, when I had gone looking for him in his native regio ...

I do it for the Sparrow and the Mouse (2020)

The Kangra Valley of Himachal Pradesh has a living tradition of the age-old water distribution system regionally called 'kuhls'. The custodians of the kuhls, or water-channels are the 'kohlis'. This film follows contemporary kohlis and their struggles in k ...

The Day a Tree Fell (2019)

A tribute to Jonas Mekas. A tree is cut down, a caterpillar climbs its own thread, and drops of moisture tremble on broad leaves. ...

Notes on Guler (2019)

Guler, a small principality near Kangra, was an artistic and cultural wellspring since it's accidental inception in the 15th century. Many greats like painters Pandit Seu, his sons Manaku, Nainsukh, and the poet Brajraj were born here. Today the whole sys ...

Drawn from Dreams (2019)

An eighteenth-century notebook from the Western Himalayan Hills has recorded in it dreams as omens. Scenes from the waking memory of the artist seem to have enlivened dreams from a bygone era. Coming from the family ateliers of the master painter Nainsukh ...

The Unknown Craftsman (2017)

Towards the end of the eighth century, an architect journeys across the lower Himalayas in search of the perfect site for constructing a temple, not merely as a place of worship but as a monumental record crystallizing the collective accomplishment of a ci ...

An Invitation (2017)

Two philosophers discuss their ideas. The next day one of them is getting married and invites the others. ...

Ishu's Balloon and a Painting that Comes to Life (2017)

A boy plays with his balloon. Something unexpected happens. ...

Two Expeditions (2017)

The film juxtaposes two journeys, one in search of the name of a Pahari painter lost in genealogical registers, and the other in search of a lake once called the eighth wonder of the world. ...

A Visit (2017)

The Ashokan rock-edict in a remote Himalayan village has the last fragment of a script only decipherable by few experts. Some miles away in Shimla, the art-historian V.C.Ohri, who uncovered the origins and techniques of Pahari paintings, warmly welcomes vi ...

Ten Questions from a Critic (2017)

The critic Max Nelson asks Amit Dutta a series of ten questions. He replies in the form of a video essay. ...

Scenes from a Sketchbook (2016)

The film is based on and inspired from the tinted brush drawings, sketches and some finished yet minimalistic works of the 18th century master miniature painter Nainsukh. Even in some of his finished paintings, the artist did not hide his corrections and a ...

Blue Elephant (2016)

A thespian rehearses a Sanskrit play from 2nd century CE. The footage is robbed of sound. The inter-titles try to tell the story. ...

Even Red Can Be Sad (2015)

This film explores various aspects of litterateur and painter Ram Kumar's personality by structuring the film around his stories and paintings, traveling between fragments of his past, present, fiction and imagery. It strives of etch out the s ...

Chitrashala: House of Paintings (2015)

When a gallery of paintings becomes emptied of its spectators, the curtains raise within the paintings. ...

Gita Govinda (2013)

The 18th century Pahari miniatures illustrating the verses of 'Gita Govinda' by the poet Jayadeva, are also loving and intimate portraits of the verdant landscape of the Kangra Valley. Nature becomes a primary actor and the director focuses on the alchemy ...

The Seventh Walk (2013)

Led by mysterious sounds and footprints, a painter wanders within a surreal space of the forest, his own paintings and oneiric spaces. ...

Venice 70: Future Reloaded (2013)

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema. ...

Field-Trip (2013)

Professor B.N. Goswamy travels back along the path of some forty years' research on the 18th century Indian master-painter Nainsukh. Field-Trip follows the scholar in the lower western Himalayas as he tracks down contemporary vestiges of Nainsukh's lineage ...

The Museum of Imagination (2012)

Amit Dutta recorded several conversations with Prof. B.N. Goswamy, an important art historian of India, covering his entire body of work. Interspersed with his talks were also some silences. This film draws upon some of those moments of silence and weaves ...

The Golden Bird (2011)

Two travelers are in search of a flying-craft, which they believe could possibly take them to the ultimate escape from the cycle of births. On their way they record their memories, dreams and fears on a sound-recorder and in a notebook. ...

Nainsukh (2011)

The 18th-century Indian painter Nainsukh of Guler receives a poetic, visually stunning tribute from a young Indian filmmaker employing an arresting pictorial language. Shot in the region where Nainsukh produced his most celebrated work, this is a meditativ ...

The Man's Woman and Other Stories (2009)

A series of three episodes which explore the relationship between men, women and the physical and mental spaces they inhabit. ...

Jangarh Film One (2008)

The village artist Jangarh Singh Shyam left home and became a well-known contemporary painter. He committed suicide in 2001. Through his art, places and stories, the filmmaker explores the traces he left on his path. ...

To Be Continued (2007)

An ascetic walks through the narrow streets of a village every morning while his family is still asleep. In his semi-somnolent state he dreams about the history of the village mixing up myths, folklore and facts. ...

Who? (2005)

Suggestions of ancient and modern myths and folklore coalesce in dreams to bring alive a colourful animated world. ...

Kshya Tra Ghya (2004)

A stream of mysterious rituals and symbols are encountered as a young boy journeys to school in the fantastical world of Kshya Tra Ghya. ...

Ramkhind (2003)

A rare and intimate glimpse into the everyday life of the famously reclusive and creative Warli tribe. Ramkhind is a village in Thane district, a little over 100km from Mumbai. Yet in the year 2000, this village had managed to stay centuries away from the ...

The Lesson (2024)

This short-film was made by Amit Dutta to encapsulate some essential teachings of Kashmir Shaivism as taught by Bettina Sharada Baeumer. The film was shot at Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Shimla) in 2016. ...

Touch Air (2023)

An homage to the influential practice and philosophy of artist Nasreen Mohamedi. The film incorporates Mohamedi's personal notes and her unique singular vision, drawing upon the aesthetics of the bare line, and its metaphysical journey eliminating physical ...