IFFR 2019: Bangladesh Artist Reetu Sattar and ‘Lost Tune’, a Short Film
Bangladesh is a little understood country whose deeply rooted culture rarely surfaces in the western world, yet once one is aware of it, it reveals many surprises. Reetu Sattar, a talented young woman from Bangladesh whose performance based art has exhibited worldwide proves it with her short film Lost Tune. The film explores presence and absence, memory, loss, resilience and the ephemerality of existence.
Lost Tune documents a performance that took place at the Asian Art Biennale Bangladesh and at the 4th edition of Dhaka Art Summit. It brought together many performers, each playing three of the seven notes of the harmonium. The artist uses the sustained droning sounds as a way to explore the violence and social upheaval that have recently affected Bangladesh, and as a wider metaphor for issues of cultural control, Diasporas and partition. By playing a sustained note, the performers make the powerful statement that they and their traditions are here to stay
During the Rotterdam Film Festival, I was pleased to meet and interview Reetu Sattar. Her work has exhibited in Liverpool Biennial, Bangkok Art Biennial and Marina Abramovich Institute, Dhaka Art Summit, Para/Site in Hong Kong, Fierce Festival in Birmingham to name just some of the international venues showing her work.
How would you describe Lost Tune?
It represents an intersection of art, performance and cinema.
It is against war and repression of rights.
How did you choose to make this film?
I was in Calcutta teaching children and I wanted them to learn to perform. There is still a harmonium in every household in Calcutta so the children brought them to class.
The harmonium was also part of our childhood. Everyone had one and learned to play it just like everyone had a sari.
How is this a “political work”?
It would be difficult to do something like this in Dhaka, but I wanted to do it.
2015 and 2016 was a difficult year. It is part of our evolving identity as a minority. In October the Hindu commission was attacked.
The harmonium is anti-Islamic. It is disappearing because of the rise of Islam extremism and it is also being replaced by keyboards.
How does it feel to be in a minority as an artist?
It is very existential. When artists are together they can actually do many things as we did in this film with many artists playing the harmonium.
Lost Tune draws together musicians, each playing three notes of the seven notes of a harmonium, an instrument that has traditionally been tightly integrated into the culture of Bangladesh.
What sort of music was this? Is this music in the film meant for meditation? Listening to it makes me feel meditative.
It is calming and meant to calm warlike tendencies.
The tune was a sargam, a warm-up practice for voices.
Thirty-three musicians were divided into five groups with different sargams, holding down three key chords in different hand positions. It gives a distorted sound with no rhythm..
It is meditative music to keep our tradition. Musicians are like the old books in our basement. Musicians are accepted by not honored.
Is the film political?
I look into things psychologically and politically.
The sustained droning sounds are used as a way to explore the social upheaval that has recently affected Bangladesh and as a wider metaphor for issues of cultural control, diaspora and partition as the much stricter interpretations of Islam have banned the use of the harmonium.
How did you come to work in these three medias?
I enjoy theater, visual art and performance equally. The baseline for all of them is the memory we can carry in our body. Ephemeral form (like theater) can change into sustainable form (film).
I explore performance in different ways. Spontaneity is important. What I do is my life, it is not ambition for a career but artistic expression.
Basically I am an actor. I started with experimental theater but have also acted in six features, Bangla coproductions. Letter to my Mother was my best international work. I acted in it.
I went to your website (https://reetusattar.com/) and enjoyed watching your work, One of my favorites was Letter to a Child Never Born…
Letter to a Child Never Born in 2002 was based on a poem by Oriana Fallucci. It was commissioned by The Japan Society.
How do you finance your work?
My last work (Lost Tune) was commissioned by the Dhaka Arts Councel and Liverpool. Most of my work is financed by my own pocket money, money I get from fesrivals and I have earned doing voice-overs or saved from household expenses.
The music was performed and then made into a film. The two happened simultaneously as a form of live art documented. And it was made in a safe place.
Where do you spend most of your time?
I was educated in Bangladesh though I have done trainings abroad over time in Europe. I spend most of my time in Bangladesh planning work, exhibitions and films.
March 9 I go to Dubai for curator Diane Campbell Betancourt, the artistic director of Dhaka Art Summit. I will do two performances and act in three films all for 2019.
How do you like being in Rotterdam?
It is a big thing for Bangladesh to be in Rotterdam. Rotterdam is so interested in art in films. My film played opening night for the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition.
Bangladesh is a small country. Economics, religion, identity and modernity is very apparent.
The film was widely appreciated by film enthusiasts both at the festival and in Dhaka. I am still receiving many compliments in the form of mails and messages.
I notice the brochure is quite unique.
Bengali Hindus have a calendar book and the film brochure is a copy of that in color and design.
By theater, performance, video, text and objects Reetu Sattar’s work navigates through memory, loss and resilience. Her works are time based. She finds the ephemerality of existence through ephemeral form of work.
Reetu enquires between the clashes between forms like theatre acting and performance art. Where the both resemble or overlap each other. Through performance Reetu try to navigate through the chasm between two close mediums of body and ego. She enjoys her journey of transition between performance and theatre. So the works are consciously away from theatrical practice but she adds voice, conversations, sound, props, costume and sculptural elements as spontaneous necessity.
