ਚੌਥੀ ਕੂਟ / THE FOURTH DIRECTION

Gurvinder Singh studied filmmaking at the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, graduating in 2001. He travelled extensively through Punjab between 2002 and 2006, living and wandering with folk itinerants, documenting folk ballads and oral narratives. He continued to make short experimental works and documenting arts/artists for the next few years. In 2005 he was invited by avant-garde Indian filmmaker Mani Kaul to be his teaching assistant for a month long master class at FTII, which led to a close association with the filmmaker who became his mentor. He translated and published a book of conversations with Mani Kaul, titled UNCLOVEN SPACE. He directed his first fiction feature in Punjabi, ANHEY GHORHEY DA DAAN (Alms for the Blind Horse) in 2011. The film premiered in ‘Orizzonti’ competition at the Venice film festival and screened at various festivals including Rotterdam, Busan, London, Munich, etc, besides releasing at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. It won the ‘Special Jury Award’ at Abu Dhabi Film Festival, and the ‘Best Film’at the International Film Festival of India, Goa in 2012. It also won three National Awards in India, including ‘Best Direction’and ‘Best Cinematography’.

 

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CHAUTHI KOOT evokes the atmosphere of suspicion, fear and paranoia of the Punjab in 1984. It considers two loosely connected incidents: two Hindu friends trying to get to Amritsar and, five months earlier, a farmer who is told he has to kill the family dog. One story flows into the other and back - like a relay race one character passing on the baton to another. What binds the two is the condition of the common man trapped between the excesses of the military on one side and the militant movement for a separate Sikh nation on the other.

 

Produced by THE FILM CAFE (INDIA)
Co-produced by NATIONAL FILM DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION (INDIA), CATHERINE DUSSART PRODUCTIONS (CDP)

Producer Kartikeya Narayan Singh

Co-producers Catherine Dussart, Nina Lath Gupta, Kuldeep Kumar, Olivia Stewart

Associate Producers Michael Henrichs, Shivani Saran, Himmat Sarkaria