pasifika styles - Mandrika Rupa

Still from Laxmi, Mandrika Rupa

Mandrika Rupa was born in Gujerat, India. Her family first left India to go to New Zealand in 1906, but she emigrated as a child in 1960. Rupa’s process of film making has been directly informed by her background in cultural and community work. Her artistic sense has developed out of a personal need to explore the social implications of immigrant communities and the effect of the new country upon them.

Click here to listen to an audio interview with the artist by Sarah Robins
(November 2005) [6.4 Mb]

Selected works

2006

Inheritance: a lament 20 mins, DVD
Directed and co-produced by Mandrika Rupa, with narration in Maori by Che Wilson. A piece that uses images shot in India of a caste of gleaners who live outside the institution of Hinduism. Rural villagers who defy the onslaught of globalisation in their daily tasks. The film focuses on endogamy and its repressive structures for these people.

2002

Taamara / Sangam (The Joining of Two Peoples) Beta SP, 58 mins. 2002
Written and produced by Mandrika Rupa
Maori people of New Zealand give an account, in their classical language, of a time when a group of Indian men came and settled in their tribal area in the early 1900s, and how their families became woven together, up to the present generation. Theatrical release / season screenings at the Capitol Cinema, Auckland, 2003.

2000

Laxmi 35mm, 12 mins, 2000
Written and directed by Mandrika Rupa
An Indian diasporic look at what it is to live in colonial New Zealand, in 1942 wartime, when ANZUS soldiers from the United States were stationed there. A coming of age story of an Indian girl who realizes why her family prefer the prejudice of a free country to the caste injustices of what they left behind. Screened at film festivals including San Francisco

International Asian American Film Festival, 3rd I Film Festival, San Francisco, Chicago and New York.