Presented and produced by Andrew Garton Right to Know is a podcast series about people coming to terms with the internet in some of India’s poorest rural and tribal districts, where many have not seen a television, or as in the ancient city of Chanderi, locals were still getting used to the idea of cars and scooters on streets built for people and donkeys.

Episode 1 – Into the media-dark

We discover what the United Nations Development Program means by India’s media-dark, we find a broadband wireless tower made entirely from junk and children from different castes sing together on a video conferencing platform in Rajasthan.

Episode 2 – Reaching the unreachable

We travel to the Indo-Nepalese border and listen in on two public meetings where some people discover, for the first time, just what a pension is and a building we are filming in is struck by lightning.

Episode 3 – The unheard will not remain unseen

We visit the ancient city of Chanderi home to four and a half-thousand weavers, we are inundated with terrifically bad smells and we find a pirate radio broadcaster living a few hours drive from where the Buddha had first meditated.

Episode 4 – Digital literacy & perils of social activism

We discover the perils of social activism in India and whether learning how to use Microsoft Notepad and Paint is digital literacy.

Presented and produced by Andrew Garton Right to Know is a podcast series about people coming to terms with the internet in some of India’s poorest rural and tribal districts, where many have not seen a television.

These are Andrew’s personal observations of the complex challenges technicians, trainers, community workers and entrepreneurs face in rural India, places difficult to get to, where even the most adventurous of private enterprise has yet to reach. And then… the challenges entailed with training millions of people unable to read or write let alone understand the myriad of services available on the web let alone comprehend what a world wide web is and how to discern fact from fiction online.

Right to Know is also a story about the making of a film. In 2015, Garton went to India to make Ocean in a Drop. The film tells the story of how these far-flung communities are finding their own uses for the internet. But this story does not begin with a film nor does it begin in India. This story begins when the internet was a mere 2,000 or so websites. This story begins in 1994 somewhere in Indochina, somewhere in Southeast Asia, on the urban fringe of Phnom Penh, Ho Chin Minh City, Hanoi, Manila, Jakarta, Beijing, Nanjing and Guangzhou.

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Credits

Adapted from the book “Right to Know: India’s Internet Avant-garde” [PDF].
Commissioned by the Association for Progressive Communications.
Photographs by Cathy Chen, Andrew Garton, Mubeen Siddique

Andrew Garton – EMPTY

EMPTY

Music, lyrics and video by Andrew Garton Performed by Andrew Garton (Melbourne), Cesare Cassarino (Johannesburg), Roy MacGregor (Cape Town), Alex Bozas (Cape Town), Simone White (Sydney), Rachel Byrnes, Kate Chinnick, Tony Nirta and Ian Dixon (Melbourne).

Produced by At Nel in Johannesburg.

Filmed on location in India for Ocean in a Drop, a film by Andrew Garton in collaboration with the Digital Empowerment Foundation.

Cameras – Jary Nemo, Rohit Dhall, Mubeen Siddiqui, Andrew Garton

Special thanks – Osama Manzar, Cathy Chen, Ravi Guria and Jasbir Lohiya without whom this shoot would not have been possible.

EMPTY is a single release available on https://andrewgarton.bandcamp.com, iTunes and Spotify.

Knowing You Knowing Me

Knowing You Knowing Me was part of Come Dance with Us, community dance workshops delivered by Ausdance Victoria supported by the City of Whittlesea. This project was also supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

Two video pieces were commissioned with the intention to document two seperate workshops; Adults – Doreen and Mums and Bubs.

Facilitators: Sasha Leong and Katrina Rank (Ausdance Victoria)
Video production and Music: Andrew Garton

This Choir Sings Carols

Once a year, in early October, around 60 people gather at the City of Whittlesea’s Fountain View Room in the northern fringes of Melbourne to begin 10 weeks of rehearsal for a single concert.

In Melbourne’s northern fringe a filmmaker, a photographer and a media artist came mentored a small production team of aspirant filmmakers, members of First Impressions Youth Theatre. With a mix of amateur and semi-professional equipment they made a film about a choir that only sings songs about Christmas, a choir comprised of people of all ages, faiths and origins.

This Choir Sings Carols is a production of Secession Films in collaboration with First Impressions Youth Theatre produced with the support of Culture and Development, City of Whittlesea and the Australian Cultural Fund.

The producers of this film recognise the rich Aboriginal heritage of this country and acknowledge the Wurundjeri Wilam clan as the traditional owners of the land we had filmed upon.

Duration: 25 mins
Completed: July 2018

Licences: Contact Andrew Garton for public screening and/or digital site licencing.

Crew

Writer / Director / Editor – Andrew Garton
Mentors – Andrew Garton, Katherine O’Donnell, Matthew Berka
Cameras – Ruwanthi Wijetunga, Aron Raward, Kasey Gardner, Ben Chapman, Tenielle Reid, Matthew Berka, Katherine O’Donnell, Andrew Garton
Interviewers – Aron Raward, Ruwanthi Wijetunga, Tenielle Reid, Kasey Gardner

Acknowledgments

Filmed at City of Whittlesea’s Fountain View Room and Redleap Reserve, Mill Park, Victoria, Australia.

With thanks to the City of Whittlesea, Westfield Plenty Valley and Harcourts Real Estate.

Produced with the support of Community and Cultural Development, City of Whittlesea and the Australian Cultural Fund.

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Stupendous

Stupendous is a short film that describes through movement and observation a group of dancers who ready themselves for a thirty-second performance they will make within, what appears to be an empty theatre. Each of the dancers lives with Parkinson’s Disease.

Produced by Katrina Rank and Paris Wages in collaboration with Andrew Garton.

Dur: 7 mins
More info: Stupendous Website