{"id":30048,"date":"2021-03-22T23:00:25","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T14:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2021\/mar\/22\/that-cloud-never-left-review-daspara-west-bengal-india-documentary"},"modified":"2021-03-22T23:00:25","modified_gmt":"2021-03-22T14:00:25","slug":"that-cloud-never-left-review-experimental-ruminations-on-cinema-and-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=30048","title":{"rendered":"That Cloud Never Left review \u2013 experimental ruminations on cinema and labour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mundane life meets magical daydreams in a West Bengal village where discarded film footage is turned into toys<\/p>\n

An artful hybrid of documentary and fiction, That Cloud Never Left zooms in on quotidian life in Daspara, a small West Bengal village where toys are made from reels of discarded film footage. The iconography is clear: these pieces of film are filled with nostalgia and longing, and now bear witness to the beauty and toil of manual labour.<\/p>\n

On the surface, That Cloud Never Left appears structurally fragmented, even opaque. There is an opening title that states that this is a work of fiction rather than a documentary; it is actually quite cheeky, considering that narrative is not a priority here, nor are any professional actors used. Instead, the film ditches linearity, and sees the villagers in fragments: a marital dispute over finances, a mother who waits for the monsoon, a boy searching for rubies in the forest. This mix of mundane life and magical daydreams lends an otherworldliness to this little village, as if the content of the cut-up film strips has seeped into everyday life.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mundane life meets magical daydreams in a West Bengal village where discarded film footage is turned into toysAn artful hybrid of documentary and fiction, That Cloud Never Left zooms in on quotidian life in Daspara, a small West Bengal village where to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2027,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[71,707,69,62,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-documentary-films","category-film","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2027"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30049,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30048\/revisions\/30049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}