Ilm Ka Shehar (City of Knowledge)

Ilm ka shehar is an essay film which examines the 19^th century idea of knowledge characterized by the spirit of inclusivity, of making things accessible, of literatures, literary practices, and reading cultures, and of open spaces. It traces the transformation of this idea to Knowledge City, a city based on the economy of byte sized information, and exclusivity. It explores the concepts of space, place, and knowledge through small narratives from the city of Hyderabad, in the Deccan region, south of India. The Hyderabad city is currently known as an information technology hub, housing the India offices of global tech giants like Google, Apple etc.

The film features the work of modernist intellectual Dr. Syed Mohiuddin Qadri Zore, and the institution he built -Idara e adabiyat e urdu (office for promotion of Urdu literature). Zore was a modernist intellectual, linguist, poet, as a centre for fostering Urdu literary production and a distinct regional Deccani identity. Idara functions as a library, and an archive of rare Deccani manuscripts. In its heyday the Idara was a centre for knowledge and Urdu literary production, today in the tech-based knowledge economy, it stands anachronistically in the city. Using archival material and oral histories, the film champions openness of ideas and open spaces.

The film is supported by SSAF-Asia Art Archive Research Grant for Archiving Histories of Ideas, Art, and Visual Culture 2022