saregamapa

One of the best short films I have seen in years

“A person becomes a bonded laborer when his or her labor is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The value of their work is invariably greater than the original sum of money borrowed. Millions of people are held in bonded labour around the world.


Bonded labor has existed for thousands of years. In South Asia it took root in the caste system and continues to flourish in feudal agricultural relationships. Bonded labor was also used as a method of colonial labor recruitment for plantations in Africa, the Caribbean and South East Asia.

Bonded laborers are routinely threatened with and subjected to physical and sexual violence. They are kept under various forms of surveillance, in some cases by armed guards. There are very few cases where chains are actually used (although it does occur) but these constraints on the bonded laborers are every bit as real and as restricting.”



KAVI - a short film written and directed by Gregg Helvey

Shocked by modern day slavery, young filmmaker Gregg Helvey, (we discussed an earlier film of his here: Overexposed’ and Responsibility in Image Making has made a fiction short ‘Kavi’, which portrays several days in the life of a young bonded worker.

It’s the best student film I’ve seen since George Lucas’s breakout ‘THX 1138 4EB’

The Film Talk ‘Kavi’

Set in a brickworks that could be anytime/anywhere, the images are corrosive, seething, painful. The cast is powerful, the roles archetypal. The photography has an oily sheen – as if the film stock itself is shamed by what it’s recording.
The image-making is simple – the compositions don’t bring attention to themselves till the end – when the pic allows itself, in relief, some wit as Kavi makes one small step for humanity*