Metabolisms of the Feminist Archive and the Nowness of Yugantar (1980–83)

Yugantar, India’s first feminist film collective, developed three films (1980-1983) together with existing or ensuing women’s groups: with female factory workers in Nipani, domestic workers in Pune and with members of Sri Shakhti Sanghatana in Hyderabad. The films’ significance lies in their pioneering collaborative approach before ‘participatory video work’ or community media became buzz words and in their negotiated positioning as aligned to but also independent of institutions or political party contexts. Thinking with their rich synergies between political and filmmaking practices proposes to explore Yugantar’s film works as a crucial legacy of feminist documentary filmmaking but furthermore as a possible spectre and catalyst for political and social struggles and their cultural practices today. This suggests to address their aesthetic form and politics not as prescriptive but emphasizes feminist archival politics imbued by active metabolisms that argues for a dynamic nowness of past political film practice and aesthetics.