Behind the Tin Sheets: city makers of Bangalore [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Laura Bear, Ekta Mittal | Stories of ghosts, love and labour as narrated by workers who built the Metro Rail in Bangalore are told in this screening and Q&A of two films by filmmaker Ekta M. These films are a part of Behind the Tin Sheets project and were co-directed by Yashaswini. R. In_transience is a film about workers' fantastical stories through labour and leisure set against shifting landscapes of a city. With residues of romance and realism, the film attempts to meander through the disparate metamorphosis of a city. A far away village set amidst a growing metropolis where workers narrate stories of love and longing. Laura Bear is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at LSE and is the author of Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy and the Intimate Historical Self. Ekta Mittal co-founded Maraa, a media and arts collective in Bangalore in 2008. She works there as a practitioner, researcher, curator and facilitator around issues of gender, labour & caste in rural and urban contexts. She also works with creative practices in public space, through independent production and collaborations with other artists. She has been making films around labour, migration and cities since 2009. Her recent film birha is about separation and longing in the context of migration. Sunil Kumar (@urban_sk) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy at LSE. He recently completed a project on the urbanisation-construction-migration - Kumar, S and M. Fernandez (2016) 'The Urbanisation-Construction-Migration Nexus in Five Cities in South Asia: Kabul, Dhaka, Chennai, Kathmandu and Lahore. Research commissioned by the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID) South Asia Research Hub (SARH), New Delhi, India. Briefing note (six pages) The full report is available at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/65861/ (30MB) The Department of Geography and Environment (@LSEGeography) is a centre of international academic excellence in economic, urban and development geography, environmental social science and climate change. Twitter hashtags for this event: #LSEFestival #ShapetheWorld