Call for interns at Pad.ma

At Pad.ma (http://pad.ma) this year, the expansion of the archive reflects its interests and intentions. Through 2012, we will be working on annotating and making public documentary footage from the Shared Footage Group (SFG). A self-organised group that came together in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage in 2002, SFG spent close to a year extensively interviewing witnesses and documenting the destruction and relief efforts. 2013 marks a hundred years of Indian cinema, so there are some using Pad.ma to explore new dimensions in cinema studies.

Also, there is an effort to create a performing arts archive; Pad.ma's time-based annotation capability offers ways of investigating performance and its processes at various levels. Pad.ma aims to collaborate with various arts institutions and initiatives who share its interest in open access and the various possibilities that emerge at the crossroads of video and text. 

An Adda at Ranan

Towards this, Pad.ma is working with Ranan, a performance company based in Calcutta, India, working in three primary areas: Production work, Performance Training and Partnership programmes. The company grew out of an immediate felt need to demystify Indian classical dance and make it accessible and enjoyable for larger audiences.

Pad.ma (Public Access Digital Media Archive) - is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not-finished films. We see Pad.ma as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and effects present in video footage, that conventions of video-making, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress. The design of the archive makes possible various types of "viewing", and contextualisation: from an overview of themes and timelines to much closer readings of transcribed dialogue and geographical locations, to layers of "writing" on top of the image material. 

We are looking for interns who are keen on engaging with video, technology and text in these ways and more. You are welcome to bring your own personal or research interests into the archive. A working knowledge of grammatical English is a must. Fluency in other Indian languages is also helpful. Please write to ranjana@pad.ma for details.