Amar Kanwar: ‘Such a Morning’

Amar Kanwar: ‘Such a Morning’

2017 | Digital | Colour, sound, no dialogue | English onscreen text | 85 min.

What does time look like when ‘night had become day/and day had become night’? How does one move about in the dark—where voice, wakefulness, and notions of freedom are obscured from the world? A modern parable about two people’s quiet engagement with the truth, Amar Kanwar’s film follows a renowned mathematics professor as he withdraws from his life to retreat into an abandoned train carriage to examine his sensorial and hallucinatory encounters, creating an almanac of the dark.

Searching for a way to re-comprehend the difficult times we are living in, Kanwar asks ‘What is it that lies beyond, when all arguments are done with? How to reconfigure and respond again?’ Such a Morning unlocks a metaphysical response to our contemporary reality as it navigates multiple hallucinations between speech and silence, fear and freedom, and democracy and fascism.

The screening will be followed by a conversation in English with Amar Kanwar and M+ Curator of Moving Image Chanel Kong.

About the Director

Amar Kanwar (b. 1964, India) has distinguished himself through films and multi‐media works which explore the politics of power, violence, and justice. His multi‐layered installations originate in narratives often drawn from zones of conflict and are characterised by a unique poetic approach to the personal, social, and political.

Portrait of Amar Kanwar. Photo by Monica Tewary

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Image at top: Amar Kanwar. Such a Morning, 2017. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.