Video artist Pallavi Paul’s The Blind Rabbit selected for International Film Festival Rotterdam

Video artist and film researcher Pallavi Paul’s essay The Blind Rabbit has been selected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The film is part of the festival’s mid-length programme in June which has five titles, three of them directed by women.

The Blind Rabbit is an allegorical fiction which is the artist's attempt to describe systematic police violence in Delhi on the basis of individual events suppressed from official history.

Pallavi Paul deploys a medley of texts, images and sounds, and scattered fragments of documentation still extant, which includes video and audio recordings of eyewitness accounts and those by the police and security forces. Multiple fragmentary recordings of ostensibly unconnected incidents are pieced together with the use of fiction to ultimately arrive at a coherent study of the abuse of power.

Speaking about the film’s selection at the festival, she told Cinestaan.com exclusively, “The Blind Rabbit is about the spectres of violence that continue to haunt us and I hope that the film, via the wonderful platform of IFFR, is able to generate a conversation about how we can re-imagine our political stake and agency in the midst of the catastrophic time we are living through.”

The IFFR organizers had earlier announced that the festival would be held in hybrid format, which includes a film programme available on demand in the Netherlands and physically in Rotterdam as well as in cinemas across the country, with COVID-19 restrictions in place. A full line-up of programmes will take place from 2–6 June, extending on demand till 9 June.