The Girl Synopsis
‘The Girl’ is a gothic tale about the resilience of children. The Girl lives in an isolated mansion in the woods in the mountains of India, with a woman, the ‘Mad Lady.’ This woman is her caretaker and watches her all the time. Their odd life is disrupted when the Mad Lady can see something she was previously oblivious to. Oblique, eerie and mysterious, ‘The Girl’ is about the violence and horror of childhood.
About the Filmmaker
Shashwati Talukdar grew up in India where her engagement with theatre and sculpture led to filmmaking, and a Masters degree from Mass Communication Research Center, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. At Jamia, she developed an interest in American Avant-Garde film and eventually got an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, Philadelphia. Her work covers many forms, including documentary, narrative and experimental.
Her work has shown at venues including the Busan International Film Festival, Margaret Mead Festival, and the International Film Festival of India.
Her experimental films and video art is regularly shown in galleries and museums around the world, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kiasma Museum of Art and the Whitney Biennial. She has been supported by entities including the Asian Cine Fund in Busan, the Jerome Foundation, India Foundation of the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and received the James Yee Mentorship award from the Center for Asian American Media and an IFP fellowship among others.
Her films include a prize-winning feature-length documentary, ‘Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!’ about a theatre group from a former “Criminal Tribe” community in Ahmedabad, and a hybrid documentary about 19th-century murals in Garhwal, ‘Wall Stories.’
AFTER WATCHING THE FILM:
Inspired by Indian Gothic greats like ‘Mahal’ from the forties and the European avant-garde films from the twenties, ‘The Girl’ is a gothic tale about the resilience of children.
