I am not very fond of watching movies. I just don’t like the unreal fantasy world of stars and actors. I like real life and I know that the world has much more for us to discover than we know until now. This is how you can only get me to watch TV with two things: either news or a good documentary.
I am lucky and happy that I can call a very good documentary maker my friend. Antje Christ, living and working in Cologne, Germany, is script-writer, director and producer in one. She visits different countries of the world, wherever there is an interesting story, be that an individual’s fate or an exotic country’s specialty that is mostly unknown. With her team she films from inside a culture, showing what a tourist can hardly ever expect to see or understand. Her movies show what you did not expect to see, they show another angle and they give you some new information. With Christ Media you can explore the world from within your living room.
While her documentaries are usually made for and broadcasted on German TV channels, there is always an English version for international audiences, too. This has made it possible for her to show me some of her movies which express another love of hers apart of making good documentaries – the love for India. Among her many documentaries there are already several about India:
Dabbawala The Lunchbox Miracle – a prize-winning documentary about those men of Mumbai who bring lunchboxes to every office of the metropolis
Always Food! India´s Mobile Kitchens – a documentary that takes you to the streets of Hyderabad and the contrasts of street vendors and fast food restaurants
Gulabi Gang The pink revolution – a report about a group of women, dressed in pink saris, fighting for the rights of women in India’s rural areas
I enjoyed all three of these productions because they were long enough to inform the viewer about something he has never heard of and at the same time short and compact, so that you don’t have a chance to get bored!
I am already looking forward to see the result of her current project for which she came again to India to shoot, this time in Delhi: a documentary about weddings and marriages in India. Christ Media has a repertoire of documentaries of several different countries and I am sure you will find something that is interesting for you, too!
