Espírito Kashi Information

As anthropologists, we work with rural communities in North India in facilitating spaces where people of different genders, religions, castes and classes can come together to address social issues through verbal performative traditions. Scripting folk tales and songs for short films, these projects have sought to engage everyone on an equal footing as actors, designers, directors, and scriptwriters. Along with our community collaborators, we have used filmmaking not only for ethnographic documentation, but also as a platform for imagining and intervening in futures. Community-based and creative approaches to research and activism, such as ethnographic filmmaking with its potential for wide knowledge dissemination, provides important means for envisioning and preparing for what the coming years may bring. Espírito Kashi was founded in 2011 by Rajat Nayyar, a visual anthropologist and currently a PhD Researcher in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. From 2011 to date, the project has produced a series of ethnographic films directed by Rajat Nayyar – ‘Antim Samskar’, ‘Thalua Club of Varanasi’, ‘Weavers of Barabanki’, ‘Vivah Samskara’, ‘Janeu’, ‘Jakari’, ‘Crossing a River, Losing a Self’, ‘Tenali Rama and Greedy Brahmins, ‘Ropani’ and ‘Kashi Labh’– that were screened in their respective communities and posted on Espírito Kashi’s YouTube channel.