Artist-in-Residence
Leena Manimekalai is a published poet and award-winning filmmaker from the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu whose works promote human rights, particularly those of marginalized people, such as the Dalit, Refugee, LGBTI+ community. Her fifteen plus films across genres and lengths have covered subjects such as caste, gender, globalization, art therapy, student politics, Tamil’s right to self-determination, eco feminism, Indigenous and LGBTI+ rights. Her films have been internationally acclaimed and have also generated reprisal, censorship attempts and death threats. She is one of the BAFTA India Breakthrough Talent, 2022 and has recently completed MFA (Film) at York University and holds a fellowship at the Centre for Free Expression, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Fellowship Research Project—Is Art non Labour?
Artists work but never become workers. They are blood banks for vampiric institutions and an insatiable public expecting them to create magically without food, safety, home, help, time or money. My meditation will be on how artists are forced to survive in the liminal space between precarity and resistance.
Selected Works
Filmography
- Goddesses (Narrative Documentary, 2007)
- Sengadal/The Dead Sea (Cinema Verite, 2011)
- Ballad of Resistance (Documentary Portrait, 2012)
- Pennadi/My Mirror is the Door (Cine Poem, 2013)
- White Van Stories (Feature Documentary, 2015)
- Is it too much to ask? (Mockumentary, 2017)
- Maadathy, an unfairy tale (Fiction Feature, 2019)
- Kaali (Performance Documentary, 2022)
- Kaathadi/Kite (Hybrid feature, 2023)
Bibliography
Six Poetry Anthologies in Tamil and three Screenplays