Murtaza Vali curates a screening of JOHN & JANE (dir. Ashim Ahluwalia), an experimental documentary portrait of call center workers in Mumbai, India who remotely provide round the clock service to customers across the United States. This outsourced labor forces these ambitious young Indians to enact virtual migrations, experiencing the processes of alienation, assimilation and enculturation that all immigrants endure without ever really leaving home. Classes in accent modification and the strange minutiae of American life and culture, paired with long night shifts, take a psychological toll, leaving them out of sync, temporally and culturally, with their immediate surroundings. Dislocated, a growing schizophrenia takes over, as dreams of the better life at the end of the phone line trumps their daily realities. Tweaking the realist conventions of documentary film making through moody cinematography and a glitchy techno soundtrack reminiscent of noir science fiction, JOHN & JANE evokes the uncanny mental spaces the call center workers eventually come to inhabit.
After the screening, Vali will discuss the film with Sukhdev Sandhu, chief film critic for the London Daily Telegraph, professor of literature at New York University and author of Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night.
Presented in conjunction with ACCENTED, on view through March 6.
Moving | Wall Pictures is a new series of film and video screenings held at BRIC Rotunda Gallery in conjunction with exhibitions on view.
Venue Information:
BRIC Rotunda Gallery is the old contemporary art exhibition space of BRIC.