The Friday List: From a new virtual murder mystery to an open mic for unpublished poets, your weekly calendar of virtual events

Compiled by Aishwarya Sahasrabudhe The lockdown induced by the rising COVID-19 cases has us all confined to our homes for days on end while all around chaos and crisis unfold with every passing day. In these difficult weeks, a solid way to keep our spirits up has been to use our leisure time purposefully by pursuing a new hobby or taking up long forgotten ones. And as public spaces continue to remain shut, our collective manner of consuming content too is turning out to be a largely virtual experience. So, while following the most stringent restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the landscape of our engagements and weekly dosages of entertainment continues to be moderated digitally, through the screen. Every Friday, we’ll bring you a curated list of online experiences — performances, talks, tours, screenings — to mark on your weekly calendar. On this week’s #FridayList: a conversation with veteran writer Nayantara Sahgal, a discussion on tattoo culture and Amazon Prime Video’s anthology series, Solos. — Talks A discussion set up by the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) as part of its ongoing series of online dialogues will focus on the prolific career of the writer Nayantara Sahgal and the motivations behind her recent works. Sahgal will be in conversation with Jayanti Naju Seth, and together they will trace the former’s writing career that has spanned nearly six decades, beginning in 1954 with her early memoir, Prison and Chocolate Cake. The author of works like The Fate of Butterflies and When The Moon Shines By Day, Sahgal is known not only for writing a stirring prose but also for being firmly anchored to her idealism and her beliefs. Through the session, Fiction as Resistance to the Un-making of India, audiences will get a glimpse into the life of this veteran author and her inspirations. To know more and register, click here. When: 21 May (8.30 pm) Museum Katta, a series of talks hosted by the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum will be featuring filmmaker Chaitanya Tamhane in conversation with writer and art historian Abhay Sardesai this Friday. Tamhane’s 2020 film, The Disciple released to great critical acclaim winning the Best Screenplay Award and International Critics Prize at the Venice International Film Festival. Co-produced by Alfonso Cuarón — director of the Academy Award-winning film Roma — Tamhane’s The Disciple follows the story of a classical Indian vocalist who has dedicated his life to music but begins to question whether he will ever achieve his aspiration to excel in the art. In this conversation with Sardesai, the director will discuss his filmmaking journey, the response of viewers to the film and the inspiration behind the story. The Disciple is now streaming on Netflix. To know more and register, click here. When: 21 May (6 pm) An interesting panel discussion brought about by Bangalore International Centre has as its subject the much contested issue of contemporary tattoo culture. Tattoos and Taboos is a conversation that explores the cultural appropriation of tribal motifs and traces the changing nature of tattoo culture in the modern world from a subversive act to an acceptable form of self-expression. Among the panellists will be founder of Headhunters Ink and Godna Gram: The Tattoo Village, Moranngam Khaling, professor of Social Psychology, Viren Swami and photographer Sanjukta Basu in conversation with  Prachi Gupta, archivist at Museum of Art and Photography (MAP). Brought forth in collaboration with MAP, the panel discussion will highlight social constructs around the concept of tattoo art and the ancient beliefs that govern the motifs represented through this art form. To know more and register, click here. When: 22 May (6 pm) — Virtual murder mystery Murdered for Money has returned with its newest virtual murder mystery challenge, A Brush with Death. This one promises to be a thrilling case set in 1923 where in the Dowager Lady Dorothy Rothersfield is preparing to celebrate her birthday and the following morning has made plans for the family to sit for a portrait as is the yearly tradition. But sparks fly when the Dowager announces that instead of her two children, it will be the butler and the cook who will inherit her fortune, and plots and plans are made to do away with the old lady. And when a sudden death shakes them all, the police are involved and two officers are tasked with solving the case. To know more and investigate the mystery, click here. When: 26 May [caption id=“attachment_9638391” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  From a workshop on animal sculptures to Sumitra Bhave’s last film Dithee and a discussion with Chaitanya Tamhane around The Disciple, a list of virtual engagements for this week. (Left) Image via Atlas Obscura[/caption] — Open mic poetry evening For the first three Saturdays of every month, Prakriti Foundation hosts poetry readings by established as well as emerging voices who discuss their inspirations and motivations while reading out some of their most prolific works. This time around, for the fourth Saturday of May, the curators of Poetry with Prakriti have set up an open mic night to feature works submitted by the audiences and find undiscovered voices. In collaboration with the forum for writers, Caferati, the foundation will welcome 25 poets who will be allotted two minutes each to present their as yet unpublished poetry. This promises to be an excellent platform for amateur poets trying to make their individual voices heard. To submit poems for this event, click here. To attend the virtual event, visit Prakriti Foundation’s Facebook page. When: 22 May (7 pm) — Virtual walkthrough The virtual walkthrough set up for this weekend by Immersive Trails explores Kolkata as a place associated with landmark events like the Bengal Renaissance and the early days of the freedom movement. It begins with a stroll along Cornwallis Street, now known as Bidhan Sarani, traversing through various places like Vidyasagar College, which was a meeting place for members of the Brahmo Samaj, as well as Swami Vivekananda’s family home and some back alleys of Cornwallis Street, exploring sites of nationalist politics in the years spanning the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Led by Tathagata Neogi, Bengal Rising Trail is an online tour that features spaces which bore witness to the Bengali spirit of nationalism and cultural resistance and how these sites became historical markers of several defining movements. To know more and register, click here. When: 23 May (6 pm) — Online workshops A two-day-long workshop set up by RSK Productions is all about learning the basics of stand-up comedy like finding what makes audiences tick, the structure of a joke, coming timing and joke delivery. To be conducted by comedian Trupti Khamkar, the online lessons will serve as an introduction to the art of performing comedy and how to best conduct oneself on stage while performing a set. The sessions will also enable participants to find out what their brand of comedy is, where they can stand to be the funniest and how this can be built into a proper stand-up. For aspiring stand-up comedians, Lesson in Comedy will surely act as an entryway into learning the performing art. To know more and register, click here. When: 22 May and 23 May (10 am to 12 pm) This is a paid event. Sculpting Mammals with Adam Matano is a six-part online workshop in which the artist will guide participants through the process of using clay to design and shape a representational mammal sculpture. Matano himself will be sculpting the critically endangered saola, also known as the Asian unicorn, and participants are invited to follow him during the demos and practice after class. The workshop brought forth by Atlas Obscura will enable students to gain an understanding of animal anatomy and proportions as well as reading photo references and by the end of the course will be able to finish their own sculpture. To know more and register, click here. When: 23 May This is a paid event. — Streaming this week Coming up on Amazon Prime Video is the series Solos, featuring seven different stories that question what it means to be human and what keeps society connected even at a time when people continue to be isolated from one another. Featuring Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Dan Stevens and Helen Mirren among others, the anthology series is a narrative spread through space and time, through sci-fi and reality, tracing the links that connect people with each other. As the seven characters embark on their separate adventures, so too they discover the power that unites them despite the distance. In these tough times of isolation and social distancing, Solos promises to be a heart-warming binge full of hope and good spirits. When: 21 May Where: Amazon Prime Video Dithee, the 2019 Marathi film made by the renowned filmmaker Sumitra Bhave is set to arrive on SonyLIV this Friday featuring Amruta Subhash, Mohan Agashe and Girish Kulkarni in the lead. The last film to have been directed by the prolific filmmaker before her death, Dithee is at once a philosophical dive into the principle of non-duality and the worldly pain of dealing with loss. It is a simple tale of a locksmith whose son drowns in a flood leaving behind a young widow and an infant girl. Struck with grief, he questions his lord and his faith in this higher power in a transcendental journey of the universal through his personal grief. When: 21 May Where: SonyLIV

This weekend MUBI will be screening the 2019 film State Funeral which traverses through the days following the death of Joseph Stalin as countless citizens flooded the Red Square in Moscow to mourn the death of their leader and attend his funeral. Directed by Sergei Loznitsa, the documentary features footage from 1953 when mourners took to the streets to mourn Stalin’s death at his funeral. The event was captured by hundreds of cameramen in detail, but the footage remained largely unseen. State Funeral takes viewers back to Soviet Russia through this unseen footage in a stirring recollection of a crucial moment in world history. When: 21 May Where: MUBI Coming up on Netflix India this Friday is the latest in zombie apocalypses, Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. A zombie outbreak has taken over Las Vegas in the film, leaving it cut off from the rest of the world. In this chaos, a group of mercenaries, including a zombie war hero and a casino owner, embark on a mission to retrieve millions of dollars from a zombie-infested quarantine zone before the city is destroyed by the authorities. Setting off on the most dangerous heist of their lives as a group of Alpha zombies closes in on them, the mercenaries are soon involved in a high stakes game in which to survive is to win. When: 21 May Where: Netflix Also read —   **Coronavirus outbreak: A database of books, performances, courses available online in these times of social distancing**