Beginning with scenes of the filmmaker’s father navigating a virtual 3D rendering of their ancestral house in Goa, India, Golden Jubilee reconsiders ideas of freedom, loss and recovery in the wake of colonial and neo-colonial theft.
A space of freedom where there is no freedom to be had, only restlessness regarding a past that is ever so present. We feel a notable sense of weight inside this digital and personal space created using the same technologies of surveillance that mining companies use for extracting iron ore in the region. A tool for extraction and exploitation becomes a method for preservation. A great feeling of distrust, anger and injustice towards the so-called liberation permeates Sanzgiri’s mixture of 16mm shots, direct animation, and desktop aesthetics, all vividly employed in this lush and ghostly look at questions of heritage, culture, and the remnants of history. (Emil Vasilache)
Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist, researcher, and filmmaker whose work contends with questions of identity, heritage, culture, and diaspora in relation to structural violence. Sanzgiri graduated from MIT with a MSc in Art, Culture and Technology in 2017. His work has been screened extensively at festivals and venues around the world including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Doclisboa, Viennale, e-Flux, REDCAT, the Menil Collection, the Block Museum, Le Cinéma Club, and the Criterion Collection, and has won awards at BlackStar Film Fest, Open City Docs Fest, and more.