[1Shanthiroad Studio]

Please not that the screening starts at 4 30 PM on Saturday 8th June 
Capital Youth Cultures - a Digital Decade
In this paired screening of Let Him Fly (2021, 29 mins) and I'm the Boss (2023, 29 mins), filmmaker and ethnographer Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan reflects on over a decade of digitally enabled youth cultural production in Delhi and his role as an ethnographer in documenting the creative play of young working class men from the city. 
Let Him Fly 2021 (उसे उड़ने दो)
Since 2011 I’ve spent time with Delhi, India’s b-boys, rappers, and graf artists. Things have changed since I first arrived on the scene. In that moment hip hop was fresh and playful, a novel way to connect with others in the city and from across the world. Today, the stakes are higher. The promise of online fame and fortune looms large. Caste, class, and religious politics widen existing divides. This film, which brings together moments of practice and play from almost a decade of footage, is a lyrical ode to the artists I met a decade ago who have persisted with their craft as they have become men navigating adult responsibilities and uncertain futures (29 minutes, Hindi with English subtitles).
I’m the Boss 2021
I'm the Boss is a short film that documents groups of young men who pass their time making TikTok and Reels videos in Delhi, the capital city of India during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.The film, which moves between an observational realist mode and the hyper-performed TikTok videos of the young men the film documents, offers a reading of gender performance in Delhi's TikTok hotspots - places in Delhi that have become visible and desirable as a result of on-location shoots by influencers. (29 minutes, Hindi with English subtitles).
Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan is an ethnographer and visual artist. His written and creative work attends to processes of racialization, performances of masculinity, and Afro-Asian interactions and their histories in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He is the author of two books, The Globally Familiar: Digital Hip Hop, masculinity, and urban space in Delhi, India ( 2020 Duke University Press) and Digital Unsettling: Decoloniality and Dispossession in the Age of Social Media (2023 with Sahana Udupa, NYU Press). Gabriel’s films have screened in international festivals, including the Tasveer International Film Festival, Ethnografilm Paris, The International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), and the German International Ethnographic Film Festival. He has exhibited his video and sound art at Khoj Arts (Delhi) and the Slought Foundation (Philadelphia). He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, New York University, having previously taught for several years at Goldsmiths, University of London.