“In the wake of its Indian Bollywood neighbour, the Bangladeshi film industry – known as ‘Dhallywood’ because it’s Dhaka-based – turns out around 100 films every year. The affluent classes prefer international productions, but for people like me, who grew up with a single TV channel, these films were for a long time the ultimate in entertainment. This is still the case for the majority of Bangladeshis. Love Me or Kill Me, the title of one of these opuses, sums up the universal scenario: boy meets girl, they fall in love, a bad guy lures her away, the hero fights to get her back. Love and revenge, the same dramatic highlights, the same happy end: the recipe’s unbeatable and people love it. As a teenager my dream was to be a musician and a singer. When I went to the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation studios the ambience was just fascinating: the colours, lights, sets, costumes – all so old world, weird, disconnected from real life, but so alive at the same time.”
Biography:
Sarker Protick was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1986. After studying marketing at the American International University there, he discovered photography when he was 24 and enrolled at the Pathshala Media Institute, also in his home city. Colour, light, minimalist composition, frontality: the Sarker Protick style – he acknowledges the influence of American photographers William Eggleston, Robert Adams and Alec Soth, and of composers Erik Satie, Arvo Pärt and John Cage – is readily recognisable. A devotee of the digital who works with a single 35mm lens, he lives and works in Dhaka and teaches at the Pathshala Institute. What Remains, his project on his grandparents, received a World Press Photo award this year.
FESTIVAL
5th Edition of PhotoQuai
Love me or kill me
Sarker Protick
Curator : Louise CLEMENTS
Until November 22nd, 2015
In Front of Quai Branly Museum
37 quai Branly
75007 Paris
France
http://www.photoquai.fr
