Video, wood, situated sound (in wooden boxes), photoengraving on eri silk, thread, stabilized bougainvillea
15:37 min, dimensions variable
ਗੁੱਡੀਆਂ (Gudiyaan) is a cinematic ‘sick body’ that traces linguistic and bodily illnesses across borders, living beings, and objects. The title translates as a doll, or a daughter in Punjabi, and references the 1928 film ‘Daughters of Today’, directed by Shankradev Arya, said to be the first Punjabi silent film made in Lahore (present-day Pakistan). The original film survives through scattered administrative data, there are no fragments or descriptions. It was made in an undivided Punjab, a time that is inaccessible to us. ਗੁੱਡੀਆਂ is a speculative reconstruction of this work, where two women from the two Punjabs walk in a nondescript forest, and attempt a conversation. The distance between my town and Lahore is only 212km. By car, it’s like 1,5 hours. By foot, it’s 2 days of walking. In this film, Imaan and I are taking an imaginary walk to the Indian side of the border, and we talk about the villages we see on the way, an ill tree, and a dying beetle whom we meet.
I was specifically interested in the moment of mass migration of partition where millions of people had to migrate, based on their religion. I was trying to find traces of chronically sick people, who were confined to hospitals at the same time of people having to flee, they’re almost never mentioned in the post-colonial conversations. They couldn’t physically leave, even when their caretakers had to. During the partition, the only mental hospital we had in the north went to Pakistan, and the Indian side had no hospital to receive the patients. The patients lived undivided for over three years, until they managed to construct a makeshift hospital in Amritsar. The patients could finally be exchanged, but half of them died along the way of other ailments that they originally did not have. The film is silent, with a decentralized sound in two wooden boxes, that is installed with a short wall partition, to represent the distance between the two Punjabis and the two Punjabs.
Anima Goyal: Author, Cast, Editor / Imaan Sattar: Co-writer, Cast, Translation / Yuxiu Xiong: Cinematography / Chufan Luo: Production Assistance / Christian Stegmann: Editor, Production / Lin Htet Aung: Color-grading.
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The forest contains many illnesses.
The stag beetle has a hole in her body, where the parasite entered.
Her body does not have a healing mechanism.
My friend’s grandmother left her doll in Jullundur.
The local map to find her previous home in the other Punjab is too old.
She rejected the new Punjab.
She has tried her best to forget Punjabi.
ਗੁੱਡੀ is walking towards Lahore, to her friend, ਗੁੱਡੀ.
ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ੀ ਵਿੱਚ ਲਿਖਣ ਨਾਲ ਉਸਦੀ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਭਾਸ਼ਾ ਬਿਮਾਰ ਹੋ ਜਾਂਦੀ ਹੈ।
English makes her Punjabi sick.
ਗੁੱਡੀ refuses to recover.
Punjabi would make her Urdu sick.
وہ ترجمہ کرنا پسند نہیں کرتی