Up, Down and Sideways, 2017

Up, Down and Sideways, 2017, 83 min. by Anushka Meenakshi and Iswar Srikumar

Almost all of the 5000 inhabitants of the village of Phek in Nagaland, India (close to the border with Myanmar) cultivate rice for their own consumption. As they work in cooperative groups, the rice cultivators of Phek sing. The seasons change, and so does the music, transforming the mundane into the hypnotic. The love that they sing of is also a metaphor for the need for the other - the friend, the family, the community, to build a polyphony of voices. Stories of love, stories of the field, stories of song, stories in song. Up, Down and Sideways is a musical portrait of a community of rice cultivators and their memories of love and loss, created from working together on the fields.