This original production, for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York directed by Dev Benegal,, presents a conversation with James Ivory interwoven with elements of art, photography, and film and set to a soundscape of Indian music and sounds of nature.
This film was created for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition Ink and Ivory: Indian Drawings and Photographs Selected with James Ivory, with support from The Lavori Sterling Foundation Endowment Fund, the Friends of Islamic Art, and the Merchant and Ivory Foundation.
Dev Benegal is considered the pioneer of the next generation of Indian cinema. His first feature film, 'English, August', is acknowledged as a landmark film in contemporary Indian cinema. It won India’s highest award in cinema, was selected at MoMA’s New Director’s New Films and was the first Indian acquisition of 20th Century Fox. His second feature 'Split Wide Open' also distributed by Fox premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and won multiple awards during its festival run. His feature 'Road, Movie', was an official selection at Atelier du Cannes. It was the opening night film at the Berlin Film Festival (Generation Plus) and was one of the first features to be distributed in the US by Robert De Niro & Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Films. He has produced over 60 short narrative films in his pioneering production program, 24×7 Making Movies. Dev is also a longtime advisor to the eQuinoxe Europe screenwriting workshop for film professionals. Their latest projects have been realized as several countries’ official submissions to the Oscars 2025.