New Indra (The Breaking of English Water)
2020
Single Channel Video
Duration: 11:03 mins
Directed by Lilian Nejatpour
Choreographed by Lilian Nejatpour and Daisy Cauty
Filmed remotely during first UK lockdown
Original Score by Lilian Nejatpour
Performed by Daisy Cauty
DOP Alfie Cauty
2020
Single Channel Video
Duration: 11:03 mins
Directed by Lilian Nejatpour
Choreographed by Lilian Nejatpour and Daisy Cauty
Filmed remotely during first UK lockdown
Original Score by Lilian Nejatpour
Performed by Daisy Cauty
DOP Alfie Cauty
New Indra (The Breaking of English Water, 2020) explores the relationship between pregnancy, writing and dreams. Taking influence from Indra, the Vedic deity of water, the film investigates the fluid, subconscious labour of dreams and its connection to foreign lands, language and dual identities. Set during the first UK lockdown, Nejatpour’s virtual collaboration with dancer Daisy Cauty, who was in her third trimester of pregnancy during filming, responds to her dreams through choreography and physical mark-making.
As a result, she becomes a semiotic agent, rewriting a history beyond representations of motherhood and subverts this binary position by “inscribing speech through movement” (Hélène Cixous- The Laugh of Medusa).
The film’s score highlights the enclosed parameters of production—with radio stations bleeding through the walls of Nejatpour’s home and news channels speaking in different tongues. The leaky over-spill of these environments presents the intrauterine space as a placeholder for gestation and linearity of time that closely resembles a dream state.
As a result, she becomes a semiotic agent, rewriting a history beyond representations of motherhood and subverts this binary position by “inscribing speech through movement” (Hélène Cixous- The Laugh of Medusa).
The film’s score highlights the enclosed parameters of production—with radio stations bleeding through the walls of Nejatpour’s home and news channels speaking in different tongues. The leaky over-spill of these environments presents the intrauterine space as a placeholder for gestation and linearity of time that closely resembles a dream state.
© Lilian Nejatpour 2022