Fifty years apart: Tales from Sarbatwalla Chowk (Pilot)

Fifty years apart: Tales from Sarbatwalla Chowk (Pilot) from Floating Weeds on Vimeo.

Fifty years apart: Tales from Sarbatwalla Chowk is a feature-length documentary on life in Sarbatwalla Chowk, today and how it used to be 50 years back.

The stories of these two times play out simultaneously throughout the film on two parallel tracks – sound and picture.

The sound track narrates, through the stories of Farrukh Dhondy from his book “Poona Company”, an account of life in the Chowk fifty years back.

The picture track documents life in Sarbatwalla Chowk today, following not the text of the stories, but the geographical arrangement of the streets in the Chowk.

The two tracks play out separately, unconnected to each other, sometimes co-inciding, sometimes diverging. By making connections between what they see at one point with what they hear at another point, viewers draw their own picture of the place, how it is now and what it used to be 50 years back.