Dirt

"What is it about feeling dirty that shames us into silence and disgust?" asks director Meghna Haldar in the feature documentary Dirt. From the slums of Kolkata to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to a barbeque joint in Central Texas – everyone has a different story – sex workers, poop scientists, sanitation artists, Catholic priests, cemetery workers, historians and little kids. Dirt isn't just a four letter word, it contains a world of meaning spanning the divine to the profane. A panoply of ideas, opinions and images captured with formal precision and overripe colour on super 16 mm, featuring animation to make Hieronymus Bosch blush, interviews with artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, tracks from Godspeed You! Black Emperor and an experimental soundscape by Clinker, Dirt digs deep to illuminate the positively filthy experience of being human. 52 minute version also available. In addition to festival screenings, Dirt has screened at the Global Conference on Multiculturalism, Conflict and Identity, Oxford University, University of Regina and will also be screened at a conference on dirt at NYMASA. Dirt will also be part of the Wellcome Trust museum exhibit on the same subject in London, 2011.