1214 – Tumbbad (2018)

timespace coordinates: 1918 – 1933 – 1947 Tumbbad village, western India (British Raj) / Pune

“The world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not everyone’s greed,” Mahatma Gandhi (!)

Tumbbad is a 2018 Indian Hindi-language period horror film directed by debutant Rahi Anil Barve and co-directed by Adesh Prasad. Written by Barve, Prasad, Mitesh Shah and Anand Gandhi, who also served as the creative director, the film was produced by Sohum Shah, Aanand L. Rai, Mukesh Shah and Amita Shah. Starring Shah in the lead role as Vinayak Rao, it follows the story of his search for a hidden treasure in 20th century Maharashtra. Pankaj Kumar served as the director of photography while Sanyukta Kaza was its editor. Music. (wiki) 

The movie was shot for 6 years. The scenes shown in the city of Tumbbad which gets rain throughout the year was shot over 4 monsoons.

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1027 – Beneath Hill 60 (2010)

timespace coordinates: 1916 – 1917 Queensland > Belgium, Western Front (World War I) Beneath Hill 60 is a 2010 Australian war film directed by Jeremy Sims (credited as Jeremy Hartley Sims) and written by David Roach.

Set during World War I, the film tells the story of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company’s efforts in mining underneath Hill 60 in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front. During the war, a series of mines filled with explosive charges were placed beneath German lines to aid the advance of British troops. The screenplay is based on an account of the ordeal written by Captain Oliver Woodward, who is portrayed by Brendan Cowell in the film. (wiki)

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911 – Black ’47 (2018)

timespace coordinates: Ireland during the Great FamineBlack ’47 is a 2018 Irish period drama film directed by Lance Daly. The screenplay is by PJ Dillon, Pierce Ryan, Eugene O’Brien and Lance Daly, based on the Irish-language short film An Ranger, written and directed by Dillon and Ryan. The film stars Hugo Weaving, James Frecheville, Jim Broadbent, Stephen Rea, Freddie Fox, Barry Keoghan, Moe Dunford, and Sarah Greene. Set in Ireland during the Great Famine, the film follows an Irish Ranger who has been fighting for the British Army abroad, as he abandons his post to reunite with his family. The title is taken from the most devastating year of the famine, 1847, which is referred to as “Black ’47”. (wiki)

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901 – Mowgli (2018)

timespace coordinates: 1850s British Raj

Rohan Chand as “Mowgli” in the Netflix film “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle”

Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (also known and stylized on screen simply as Mowgli) is a 2018 fantasy adventure film directed by Andy Serkis based on stories collected in All the Mowgli Stories by Rudyard Kipling. The film stars Rohan Chand, Matthew Rhys, and Freida Pinto, along with voice and motion capture performances from Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Naomie Harris, and Serkis. (wiki)

‘Mowgli’: A wildly impressive — and very dark — version of ‘The Jungle Book’

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870 – Botany: A Blooming History (Documentary | TV Mini-Series 2014)

BBC Botany A Blooming History – A Confusion of Names

BBC Botany A Blooming History – Photosynthesis

BBC Botany: A Blooming History – Hidden World

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869 – Cruickshank on Kew: The Garden That Changed the World (2009 Documentary)

As the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew prepare to celebrate their 250th anniversary, Dan Cruickshank unearths some of the surprising stories that shaped the famous gardens. His travels take him from the royal gardens to the corridors of power and the outposts of the Empire as he pieces together Kew’s story, uncovering tales of bravery, high adventure, passion and drama. (docuwiki)

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866

‘The country blooms – a garden, and a grave’, Oliver Goldsmith ‘The Deserted Village’.

Nick Groom – ‘Let’s discuss over country supper soon’ – Rural Realities and Rustic Representations

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“The whole ambition of the picturesque was to rework the natural world into a ‘landscape’ – a word that came to England at the end of the sixteenth century
from the German, via the Dutch. Early English uses of ‘landskip’ are strongly cultural – the word is used to describe paintings,
particularly the backgrounds of paintings, and thereby any view that could conceivably be painted.”

“The picturesque encouraged the critical appreciation of nature as a spectacle. Observers of a scene – the word ‘scene’ itself reveals the implicit theatricality of viewing – became an audience, by turns appreciative or critical.
Hence natural landscapes became part of culture, and were understood, judged, and painted according to artistic conventions and aesthetic theories.
For a growing proportion of the increasingly urban population, initial encounters with natural landscapes would be through the medium of art: representations delivered either by pastoral poetry or in picturesque images.”

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‘In grand scenes, even the peasant cannot be admitted, if he be employed in the low occupations of his profession:  the spade, the scythe, and the rake are all excluded.’ What was allowed was pastoral idleness:  the lazy cowherd resting on his pole . . . the peasant lolling on a rock’, an angler rather than a fisherman, and gypsies, banditti, and the occasional individual soldier in antique armour. The image of the countryside  presented therefore looked very much in need of improvement – slack, inefficient, indigent, lawless, and archaic. Moreover, once ‘improved’ the landscape was likely to be as empty of agricultural labour as the picturesque depicted it since nearly all the peasantry would have been forced off the land.