8.05 PM | Siddheshwari

1989 | India | Documentary | Hindi (English Subtitles) | 123 min

Directed by Mani Kaul

A film about the great thumri singer Siddheshwari Devi, who was born on August 8, 1902. Breaking all conventional modes of biographical or documentary filmmaking, this film becomes a work of transgression. It transgresses both home and dream. Like a Sufi wanderer, it celebrates the life of exile. No space holds, no truth encompasses, no identity is the final. Here is a film that takes the 'documentary' non-representational to its limits, turning the fictional material natural to a biography into a presentation, and the objects and locations into an imaginative becoming of music.