CHE Media House
  • Documentary
  • Politics
  • Highlights 00:48

One Border, Two Politics

Two neighbouring states, two ways of asking for a vote: what the election posters of Kerala and Tamil Nadu say about the politics behind them.

Details

Format
Documentary
Length
18 min
Now showing
Highlights · 00:48
Filmed in
Kerala and Tamil Nadu
Subtitles
English

About the film

Seen from Kanyakumari, a district on the border, the elections of Kerala and Tamil Nadu arrive together and look nothing alike. On one side, a single candidate, a symbol and a few words. On the other, a banner crowded with faces, down to the ward councillor.

One Border, Two Politics talks to designers, a student, a researcher and a politician to ask why. Their answers run from white space and typography to cinema, hierarchy, and what a party believes its voters need to be shown.

It is a film about graphic design that turns out to be about how politics works.

Highlights

4 moments

One Border, Two Politics

“I got a chance to experience both Kerala and Tamil Nadu elections at the same time.”
The filmmaker

One Border, Two Politics

“Our posters contain the whole world.”
A product designer

One Border, Two Politics

“On one side, politics moves with icons, and on the other, it moves with ideology.”
A researcher

One Border, Two Politics

“Governments may change, and parties may change, but these walls and their purpose remain.”
The filmmaker

Stills

12 frames

An elderly man sits on a ledge below a wall covered in painted slogans and election posters.
An old man below a wall of election posters.
Two hands press a new poster onto a wall already layered with others.
Hands press a poster onto a wall.
Three men sit side by side on a step, election posters covering the wall behind them.
Three men under the posters.
A man stands with his palms together in front of a long wall of repeated election posters.
A wall of posters, the same face repeated.
Seen from a moving car, billboards rise above palm trees along a highway.
Billboards along the highway.
A large election poster leans against a tree outside a roadside shop, a woman walking past.
A candidate's poster outside a roadside shop.
Men sit in the shade of a tin-roofed shelter whose walls are covered in posters, a red star painted beside them.
A shelter papered with posters.
A roadside arch and fence hung with wide banners full of faces.
Banners crowd a roadside gate.
A group of men sit on the veranda of a small tiled building pasted with posters.
Men gather at a roadside building.
A young man speaks outdoors in front of old red-brick college buildings.
A student, interviewed on campus.
A row of posters runs along a low wall beneath a large tree.
Posters along a wall beneath a tree.
A red flag bearing a portrait flies against a pale evening sky.
A flag over the street.

More films

All films

Work with us

Know a story like this one?

We are always looking for the next film: a person, a practice or a place that deserves to be on record.

Studio
Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu