Kalighat Fetish is contemplation on two ideas - transgression and morbidity. They are connected by the act of transformation, leading to death. Both the violence of sacrifice and the performance of transformation for me are transgressive acts performed as an engagement with morbidity. They are part of the same act of reverence and anguish. For me, Kalighat Fetish is an outcome of my own interaction with the memory of death and dying. The brutality of the sacrifice is for me a meditation on the morbidity of death.
Personally, the film is a cinematographic rendition of memory. The film has been shot in two spatial formations that are an integral part of my memoryscape - the house I was raised and the famous neighbourhood Kali temple in Kolkata - the Kalighat.

Ashish Avikunthak