About the film

The film traces the Goddess Durga as a living Goddess in India and as a museum object in Europe, affective associations, while telling her story through vibrant living traditions in India (inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021). The film asks how Durga’s alternative heritage(s) can be re-connected to the multiple lives of Durga as well as at myths of Durga’s origin, which allow us to narrate her story as an affective figure in Indian history and in different local cultural traditions that possesses a plural identity. It highlights themes of gender, art, emotions, decolonization, critical heritage and postcolonial museum studies. It is a result of extensive ethnographic fieldwork in India and Europe. The film has had its first screening at Kino Babylon in Berlin to a full house.

Watch the trailer and read more

About the event

We are delighted to welcome the director of the film, who will be present to introduce the screening and take part in a Q&A session afterwards, with Dr Priyanka Basu acting as a discussant.

Following the screening and Q&A, please join us for a drinks reception – a great opportunity to continue the conversation and connect with others.

About the director

Dr Ranjamrittika Bhowmik

Dr Ranjamrittika Bhowmik is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt University of Berlin. She received her DPhil in Asian Studies from the University of Oxford in 2023. Her scholarship engages with politics of language, mysticism, metaphor, AI ethics, literature and religion, and the politics of alternative social imaginaries, examining concepts of the subtle body and the literary and performative traditions in India. Trained in Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Literature, her postdoctoral project—at Humboldt University and the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin—investigates the history of emotions, forgotten object histories, memory, decolonization, and intersectionality.

She has held fellowships from the European Union, Government of India, and the Universities of Oxford, London, Milan, University of Lausanne. She is committed to conserving and promoting cultural and literary heritage, indigenous knowledge systems, and the oral traditions of historically underrepresented communities.

The documentary film was produced by the Berlin University Alliance and is an output of a postdoctoral project of the Institute for European Ethnology, called “Museums and Society: Mapping the Social”.