In 1969, Mani Kaul made his debut feature film ‘Uski Roti’ (A Day’s Bread) which brought in radically fresher environment in Indian cinema that was much burdened by theatricality and realism. He drew aspects of Indian (both Buddhist and Hindu) philosophical texts, e.g. the Vaisheshika school of Hinduism that like Buddhism accepted two reliable means of knowledge - perception and inference. Could absence be perceived in or through presence? Could time be perceptibly felt? These were some of the ideas that Kaul grappled with. For Kaul, cinematography was temporal. Fifty years later, through my ‘Prayoga’ film ‘The Falling Fruit. The Frozen Time. And the Five Variations on Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti,’ I am revisiting Kaul’s film, creating five variations from its key inaugural shot which has become my basic note. Here, time suspends itself and makes the ‘absence’ felt. These five variations have given rise to different experiences by retaining Mani Kaul’s thoughts. The film is made over the course of six months with regular mobile phones and homemade equipment. These are the elements of ‘The Rigour of Austerity’ which is the core principle of film theorist Amrit Gangar’s concept of ‘Cinema of Prayoga.

Somewhere in the world there is a remote island. The sea. Lush hills. The impenetrable forest. The constantly changing weather. In a lodge by the sea, a Chinese writer immersing herself in reading and writing encounters a Japanese girl who is in a melancholic mood. "Have you ever seen something after its disappearance?" the girl asks. "Where are we right now?" the writer asks. "Somewhere in the past," the girl answers. Night after night some dreams lull them into sleep, but a heavy heart is lost in deep thoughts. What has actually happened and what the two girls are feeling, imagining or remembering starts to overlap. Is the scene of the outer world also becoming the self's inner world?

In the black-and-white film "Blastogenesis X" Conrad Veit and Charlotte Maria Kätzl stage an animal documentary set in stone quarries in which hybrid creatures deconstruct all boundaries between humans and animals and masculinity and femininity. The film transports viewers on a journey to the early days of silent films that reveals itself as a utopian vision in which all forms of life are equal.

The rise of mining made post-communist Mongolia the fastest growing economy in the world in 2012. However, the poor were not profiting from this booming industry, and climate change plus overgrazing were leading to vast desertification. According to Mongolian shamanistic belief violation of nature by men provokes the anger of the ruling spirits or the ‘masters of the land’. Texts by shamaness Kyrgys Khurak and Hungarian poet Ferenc Juhasz, who experienced the painful initiation of a shaman in 1957, cut the medium long shots. Interweaving the rich spiritual Mongol tradition with a visual portrait of the country, Masters of the Land submerges the viewer in an intoxicating finale.