People’s Archive of Food Memories
This short film was prepared by students from Janki Devi Memorial College (JDMC), University of Delhi, who participated in a programme to create a ‘People’s Archive of Food Memories’ amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.
Interviews were taken by student ethnographers, as they were styled, with close family and friends, including grandparents, mothers and aunties, most of whom had migrated to Delhi from other parts of India over the last fifty years. Accordingly, the interviews captured individual perspectives on an impressive array of local and regional food cultures: from Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, western and eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar, Bengal, Mizoram, Manipur, Karnataka, Kerala and, of course, Delhi itself.
In the film, the student ethnographers trace from their own perspective the thinking behind the project, some of the main themes from the interviews, and the impact of participating on interviewer and interviewee alike. Revealed is an attention to cooking and eating, not just as subsistence, but as sensuality, pleasure, caring and belonging.
About the film
The film was prepared by the following student ethnographers: Jagriti Kumar, Khushboo Rashid, Gayathri S. Nair, Ayesha Qureshi, Rupali, Bushra Saifi, Neha Upreti, Nikita Sharma, Mary, Rohit Nirwal and Anchit Jain. It was done so with support from Professor Saumya Gupta. It was first shown at the Jashn-e Rampur, India International Centre, October 2022.
About the research
This short film was prepared as part of the project Forgotten Food: Culinary Memory, Local Heritage and Lost Agricultural Varieties in India.
Credits
- Produced by: Jagriti Kumar, Khushboo Rashid, Gayathri S. Nair, Ayesha Qureshi, Rupali, Bushra Saifi, Neha Upreti, Nikita Sharma, Mary, Rohit Nirwal and Anchit Jain (Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi)
- Research: Professor Siobhan Lambert-Hurley (Professor of Global History, University of Sheffield), Professor Saumya Gupta (Associate Professor, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi), Professor Duncan Cameron (Chair in Environmental Sustainability, University of Manchester), Professor Claire Chambers (Professor of Global Literature, University of York)
- The project was funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund through the Arts & Humanities Research Council in the United Kingdom