Author: Cities of Sleep
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Cities of Sleep is a 74 minute feature length documentary, directed by Shaunak Sen and produced by Films Division (India) ‘Cities of Sleep’ takes us into a heady world of insurgent sleeper’s communities as well as the infamous ‘sleep mafia’ in Delhi where just securing a safe sleeping spot often becomes a question of life and death for a large number of people. The film trails the lives of two individuals, Shakeel and Ranjeet. Shakeel, a renegade homeless sleeper has for the last 7 years slept in a diverse range of improvised places like subways, under park benches, parking lots, abandoned cars and lately, at areas controlled by the sleep mafia. The film follows his attempts to secure a safe sleeping space just around the time the infamous winter rains of Delhi are due. Ranjeet runs the ‘sleep-cinema’ community in Loha Pul in Delhi, a huge double-storey iron bridge straddling the banks of the river Yamuna. A thin strip of land under Loha Pul houses shanty cinemas where over 400 odd homeless come and sleep through the day for a nominal price. The flooding of the river Yamuna poses a threat to the people sleeping there every monsoon. The film looks at not only the tremendous social and political pressure that sleep exerts on the homeless in the city but is also a philosophical exploration of sleep at large. Credits: Directed by Shaunak Sen; Production - V.S. Kundu (Films Division); Associate director - Aman Mann; Creative Production by Saif Akhtar; Cinematography - Salim Khan and Shaunak Sen; Additional Camera - Sundarram Arjun; Editing - Sreya Chatterjee and Shaunak Sen; Music by Ritwik De; Sound Design - Sahil Dhingra and Vishwajoy Mukherjee; Assistant Directors - Sundarram Arjun and Rohan Ranganathan; Graphic Design - Navedita Singh and Salim Khan www.citiesofsleep.com