In Between Us | Humare Beech Mein

Rajkumari Prajapati, Ruchika Negi / Documentary / India / Hindi / 35:00 / 2023

7th March 2024 | 4.45 pm | CD Deshmukh Auditorium | Filmmakers in attendance

In Between Us is a conversation between two women about making a film on caste. How does one show the ordinary, viscerally? How do you use the camera to reveal structures of power and maybe, even take back some power for ourselves? How does image making help us negotiate, question and reflect on our differences? And as documentarians, how do we film caste? What do we show? What do we hide? Who has access? Who refrains? Shot on mobile phone cameras in western Uttar Pradesh, the film seeks to explore the personal positions of the two women, Rajkumari, a social activist from Lalitpur UP, and Ruchika, a documentary filmmaker and educator from New Delhi, within the stratified structure of caste. The collaboration between the filmmakers is borne out of their association with the feminist think tank, The Third Eye’s Learning Lab, an arts based pedagogical platform of which both have been a part over the last two and half years.

Directors’ bio:

Rajkumari Prajapati is a social activist embedded in the grassroots women’s collective, Sahjani Shiksha Kendra, in western Uttar Pradesh, for over two decades. She is also a part of the feminist think tank, The Third Eye’s Learning Lab, an arts based pedagogical platform.

Ruchika Negi is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and an educator. Ruchika taught at the Creative Documentary Course (Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts & Communication, Delhi) from 2015-2022, and occasionally teaches film at the Ashoka University, Sonipat. Currently, she leads the Learning Lab, an arts based pedagogical platform of the feminist think tank, The Third Eye, where she mentors grassroots activists from districts in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand, in diverse kinds of narrative making using visual/textual/ aural forms.