Pad.ma - short for Public Access Digital Media Archive - is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non-commercial use.
We see Pad.ma as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and effects present in video footage, resources that conventions of video-making, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress, or leave behind. This expanded treatment then points to other, political potentials for such material, and leads us into lesser-known territory for video itself… beyond the finite documentary film or the online video clip.
The design of the archive makes possible various types of “viewing”, and contextualisation: from an overview of themes and timelines to much closer readings of transcribed dialogue and geographical locations, to layers of “writing” on top of the image material. Descriptions, keywords and other annotations have been placed on timelines by both archive contributors and users. At the moment, Pad.ma has 1105 “events” on video, mostly from Mumbai and Bangalore. This adds up to 22 days 10 hours 9 minutes 35 seconds of fully transcribed video footage, which we expect to grow to more than 600 hours by late 2012.
Pad.ma is now available in its next iteration. To navigate the new website take the tour or watch this extremely easy video screencast done by Sanjay Bhangar. Tour of Pandora (software framework for Pad.ma). Video Screencast.
Pad.ma is now based on https://pan.do/ra framework that makes it easier to browse and search video (based on source, keyword, people featured in video, project/collection, lists, maps, events), to do time-based annotations, collate personal or public lists, share and embed video on other websites. This year we will also be expanding footage in Pad.ma to include the performing arts, cinema history and documentary footage projects, especially our collaboration with Shared Footage Group.
Kolar Gold Fields: This collection of footage tracks 100 years of gold-mining in Kolar Gold Fields through videos, interviews and photographs. From memories of days when gold-bearing trams departed from this small town to the derelict mines of the present, KGF has seen vast changes since early 20th century. The videos are annotated with excerpts from Janaki Nair’s historical mapping of the labour movement, caste and community in Kolar. The collection is a contribution from Ayisha Abraham and Janaki Nair, the footage is shot by R.V Ramani and interviews have been transcribed and translated by Nitya Vasudevan. You can see a video about the making of gold, an interview about long history of labour unions in KGF since the 21 day strike in 1930 or a Doordarshan panegyric program on KGF, made in 1981.
THE 377 TRANSCRIPTS: A Brief History of the Naz Foundation Judgement by Siddharth Narain: Judicial reasonings and musings are often inaccessible to anyone outside the courtroom, especially as proceedings cannot be taped or shared. This essay is about the Naz Foundation judgment and the petition against the anti-sodomy penal law in India. It archives the polemics between lawyers and judges, the asides of official processes and links these to video testimonies of homophobia and stigma, clips from movies and footage of pride marches.
Conversation on Dance and Beautiful Thing2: Padmini Chettur’s contemporary dance performance beautiful thing2 explores various ways in which the body becomes unlike itself. Her performances explore the body as an object in space and her sparse movements, borne in deliberate slowness, allow the viewer to viscerally connect with the body’s line of flight. This performance is included here and annotated, including the dancer’s comments.
Please write to us and send feedback to pad.ma [at] pad.ma or to n [at] pad.ma. To know more about fellowships, please write to n [at] pad.ma.
Our updates will consist of newly added videos, essays or annotations.
To see current and past updates online: http://pad.ma/news
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The Pad.ma project is initiated by a group consisting of 0×2620 from Berlin, the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore, and three organisations from Mumbai: Majlis, Point of View and Chitrakarkhana/CAMP.
It was supported at its inception by a seed grant from HIVOS. Currently Pad.ma is supported by the Bohen Foundation and the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.
