Court
Directed by: Chaitanya Tamhane
2014 | India | 116 minutes | Unrated
Screening | Friday, May 20, 2016, 7pm |
Screening | Saturday, May 21, 2016, 7pm |
Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court is a quietly devastating, absurdist portrait of injustice, caste prejudice, and venal politics in contemporary India. An elderly folk singer and grassroots organizer, dubbed the “people’s poet,” is arrested on a trumped-up charge of inciting a sewage worker to commit suicide. His trial is a ridiculous and harrowing display of institutional incompetence, with endless procedural delays, coached witnesses for the prosecution, and obsessive privileging of arcane colonial law over reason and mercy.
