Ashish Avikunthak (born 1972) is an Indian avant-garde filmmaker, film theorist, archaeologist and cultural anthropologist.
He created a body of work that explored ideas of ceremonial rituals, banality and the inter-relationships between selves and the concepts of ‘community’ and ‘politicality’ by challenging conventional forms of representations.
[27] In 2002, Avikunthak adapted Samuel Becket’s enigmatic dramaticule “Come and Go” into a 16mm short film in Hindi called “Antaral” (End Note).
[40] Made in Kolkata it is Bengali language film, in which six newlywed couples on their wedding night sit in a circle with a priestess in an ancient temple and have a protracted exchange before they commit mass suicide.
In this feature film, Samuel Beckett’s celebrated play “Waiting for Godot” is transplanted from its European context to Bengali language and the Hindu pilgrimage site of the Kumbh Mela.
[44][45] In a review published in Artforum, art critic Murtaza Vali, writes that: “through this film, Avikunthak orchestrates a somewhat unexpected encounter between opposing perspectives or bodies of knowledge—sacred/secular, modernity/tradition, philosophy/politics—the friction between them forcing each to open up to the wisdom of the other.
[47][48] In the screening of this film at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2023, it noted that: "Kali of Emergency juxtaposes two kinds of Hindu iconography, mingling the elaborately costumed, stylised gods of popular representations with the austere forms found in pre-modern paintings and temple sculptures...Filled with incandescent images, Kali of Emergency is of a piece with Avikunthak’s singular, personal body of work.
[50][51] It is a film that “is set in a parallel universe where artificial intelligence has usurped humanity’s reign over the planet…Glossary of Non-Human Love can also be viewed as an ecocritical commentary on technological evolution.
[63] In July 2017, a social-media outrage erupted when Avikunthak was debarred from entering the upmarket Quest Mall in Kolkata because he was wearing a dhoti.