If from Every Tongue It Drips

If from Every Tongue It Drips is a hybrid documentary film that uses the framework of quantum physics to explore the ways that personal relationships and political movements at once transcend and challenge time, space, identity, and location. The film follows the lives of a couple living in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka; Ponni writes Rekhti, a form of 19th-century, Urdu, queer poetry; the other, Sarala, is the camera operator. As their personal lives unfold on camera, the lines between rehearsal and reality, location and distance, self and other dissipate and reinforce one another. Simultaneously, through the poet and the camera operator’s daily lives, interconnections between British colonialism, Indian nationalism, and the impact of both on contemporary poetry, dance, and music in South Asia are revealed.
If from Every Tongue It Drips explores both literal and figural translation as multiple ways of looking, embedded within the filmmaking process, conducted through a call and response exchange of sound, text, and image between Montreal, Batticaloa, and the Isle of Skye. The film process included working with Glasgow-based Collective Text to integrate captions into the film.