Keeping Art Alive: Film Review Tomorrow We Disappear Three artists represent nearly 3,000 individuals from the New Delhi colony, Kathputli, in Jimmy Goldblum and Adam Weber’s documentary Tomorrow We Disappear, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs International Documentary Festival in 2014. Over the course of three years and through the three protagonists featured, viewers are shown what it’s like living in a poor, yet beloved community fabricated from these artists' very time and hands, that is soon to be destroyed when the government sells the land to wealthy developers. As the eviction approaches, we are witnesses to the manipulations of powerful intuitions, the struggles that parallel with unconventional and unsupported …show more content…
Our three protagonists' frustrations are all revealed in different ways. Puppeteer Puran Bhatt is very instrumental in the meetings involving the colony, the government and the developers. He writes letters, creates blueprints and proposals regarding the two-year housing the government is forcing them into. The results after Bhatt’s requests for a sound water system, studio and storage space is always the same. The government only proves their ignorance regarding what the Kathputli people need in order for their art to survive, which for some means their very own survival. And while Puran relays on Rahman for support, his longtime friend decides to no longer participate in the meetings or help with the eager compromises Puran selflessly presents. Instead Rahman nearly hides, avoiding the government and the imminent …show more content…
However, the most magical aspect captured in this documentary is when and how the artists’ creativity is fueled by the harshness of this reality. For example, in between the colony meetings with the developers Puran holds a small wooden puppet in front of the camera. Like the audience, the camera becomes a member, watching a soundless performance as the puppet’s hand wipes away invisible tears. These movements continue after the contacts are signed and a young artist places a huge wooden mask over his head, floats across the dirt floor of his slum, silently wiping away similar tears and dances a new dance the Kathputli colony now knows by heart. These gripping performances weave their way back in, especially among the artists' children. Their art comes to represent more than it possibly ever had. Flying bird costumes are made for protests, standing taller than anyone else, flapping their wings, singing out: “We are the flying birds, here today, gone tomorrow.” And just like the young artist who wore the wooden mask, improvising to express himself, more children follow suit and create larger puppets to dance in front of the developers’ bulldozers. We watch them fight back wearing their most precious armor: