Call Cutta

Mobile Phone Theatre

By Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel

The film documentation of the remote-controlled tour through Calcutta and Berlin from an Indian call centre. ‘Call Cutta’ explores what happens when transatlantic entertainment serves not to sell, but to seduce you through your own urban jungle.

As soon as the mobile phone rings in your hand, the intercontinental play begins: a voice with an Indian accent answers, still a stranger, soon to become your ally. ‘Do you see the red house in front of you? Walk towards it, bend down as if you were tying your shoes, then you can look inconspicuously into the basement window. Are the curtains open? What is the employee doing at the desk? Then go quickly to the door...’ Step by step, the conversation leads through the social building landscape of Kreuzberg West. Word for word, the city becomes a film whose ‘camera’ is a walker on the phone. The sound oscillates between service line, GPS navigation, blind date, confession and Indian conversational art: live, 1:1.

Just like thousands of German workplaces, Call Cutta's performers are also outsourced. They are based 15,000 kilometres and a four-and-a-half hour time difference to the east, in the Infinity Tower, North-East Calcutta, West Bengal, India. They know as much about Berlin as other call centre employees know about their transatlantic customers. They follow a script that is open to many sides. Can a city be overwritten with an instruction manual?

By: Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi, Daniel Wetzel

Film by: Anjan Dutt
Editor: Mainak Bhaumik
Cinematography: Indranil Mukherjee (Calcutta), Emre Erkmen (Berlin), Vojtech Pokorny (Berlin)
Sound: Julio Rodriguez (Berlin), Gautam Nag (Calcutta)
Audiography: Mainak Bhaumik, Anup Mukherjee
Music: Neel Duttm Mainak Bhaumik
Production Controller: Sarika Hemi Lakhani (Berlin)
Line Producer: Sanjay Pathak
Assistant Editor: Parameswar Pusti
Assistant Camera: Amit Kapur
Music Associate: Amit Dutta, Raja Dep
Post-Production Consultants: Rimini Protokoll, Arghyakamal Mitra
Production Boys: Biswanath Mondal, Sambhu Mondal
Graphics: Debabrata Deyashi

Live telephone voices in the call centre: Shuktara Banerjee, Sonali Mehrotra, Madushree Mukherjee, Priyanka Nandy, Ranjana Pradhan, Ritwika Ray chaudhuri, Aditi Roy, Sunayana Roy, Sagnik Chakraborty, Kanav Chopra, Islam Mohammed, David Xavier

A production by Goethe Institut Kolkata, HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Rimini Apparat

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation / Goethe Institut Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata / Databaazar / Computer Exchange and the BVG

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