About Pad.ma
Pad.ma - short for Public Access Digital Media Archive - is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material,
primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is
searchable and viewable online and is free to download for non-commercial use.
We see Pad.ma as a non-state archive of video material, personally and politically gathered by cultural workers in the region. It is as a way of opening up a set of images, intentions and effects present in video footage, resources that conventions of video-making, editing and spectatorship have tended to suppress or leave
behind. This expanded treatment leads us into lesser-known
territory for video itself... beyond the finite documentary film or
the online video clip.
The design of the archive makes possible various types of "viewing" and contextualisation: from an overview of themes and timelines to
much closer readings of transcribed dialogue and geographical
locations, to layers of "writing" on top of the image material.
Descriptions, keywords and other annotations have been placed on
timelines by both archive contributors and users.
The Pad.ma project was initiated in late 2007 by a group consisting of
CAMP, from Mumbai,
0x2620 from Berlin, and the
Alternative Law Forum from
Bangalore. Two other organisations from Mumbai,
Majlis and
Point of View were part of its initiation.
It was supported at its inception by a seed grant from HIVOS. Since 2010, Pad.ma is being supported by its many contributors and by grants from the
Bohen Foundation and the
Foundation for Arts Initiatives.
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