“Crucible” by Ranu Mukherjee (http://ranumukherjee.com/)

(-a situation of severe trial, or in which different elements interact, leading to the creation of something new./a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development.)

”Crucible” reconfigures elements of Mukherjee's 2015 hybrid film work 'Home and the World' in the context of her more recent explorations of the forest as locus for questions of survival, agency and the unknown. This short animated tableaux incorporates a range of her signature materials, layering digital animation with live action, painted imagery and images of patterned sari cloth. 

Home and the World refers to one scene in a 1984 film by Satyajit Ray adapting a 1916 novel by Rabindranath Tagore, in which a woman walks out of her domestic chambers to engage in the nascent post-colonial politics of late 19th century India. Mukherjee remade the scene using different figures to represent a range of roles women take on in the work of moving forward, including images of labor and of protest and vigil around rape culture that were taking place  both in India and in the US as she was making the film. In Crucible, the figures move in a prismatic forest space where colored shards float and fall,  patterns overlay and microphones are placed to tune in to the whispers of the trees. The title calls up Arthur Miller's novel, reflecting on how the forest was configured as a space of evil in the Puritanical belief system that underlies the foundations of the United States.

Editions minted: 95