Sutapa Biswas, "Lumen"

About this Film

Sutapa Biswas's visually stunning new film draws on her family’s departure from India in the mid-1960s and creates a poetic reflection on the experience of migration and the feelings of rupture, dislocation, longing, and belonging. The journey by sea from India to England with her mother and siblings was a formative experience for the four-year-old Biswas. The vivid images she has retained of that crossing—and her mother’s anxieties and fears for her children and their future—are revisited through the film’s powerful narrative.

Film credits

Lumen, 2021. Digital video mastered on 4K. Duration: 30 minutes. Colour with sound. © Sutapa Biswas. All rights reserved, DACS 2021. Co-commissioned by FVU, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art with Art Fund support through the Moving Image Fund for Museums. The commission is additionally supported by Autograph. Supported by Arts Council England.