CHE Media House
  • Documentary
  • Belief
  • Teaser 01:00

Sacred Stones

A documentary on the folk deities of the Tamil land, and the people who have never stopped tending them.

Details

Format
Documentary
Now showing
Teaser · 01:00
Made with
Nadugal Tamil Sangam
Subtitles
English

About the film

At the edge of a field, at the foot of a tree, beside a road: a stone, dressed in cloth and marked for worship. Across the Tamil countryside, shrines like these hold gods who were never handed down from a palace or a scripture. They rose from the people who live beside them.

Sacred Stones traces the roots of Tamil folk deities through rural shrines, ritual worship and oral history. Made with Nadugal Tamil Sangam, the film listens to the researchers, writers and worshippers who carry these traditions, and follows the festivals where a whole community gathers before its own gods.

The teaser is out now.

Voices from the film

“Deities like Madan arose from the people, and Isakki’s roots lie in this land. That’s why these deities are my own gods.”
An epigraphist
“Established religions and their gods bring political and economic benefits, but folk deities bring hope to the common people.”
A writer and researcher

Stills

12 frames

A rough stone wrapped in white cloth, with a dab of colour pressed onto it.
A stone dressed in cloth and marked for worship.
A dense festival crowd, with dancers moving through a cloud of smoke.
Dancers move through smoke at a festival.
A painted clay figure with a tall headdress, seen in profile among tall dry grass.
A painted figure, left to the grass.
An elderly woman under strings of festival lights at night, sacred ash on her forehead.
A woman under festival lights.
Stones at the foot of trees whose trunks are painted white and bound in yellow cloth.
Stones at the foot of a cloth-bound tree.
Extreme close-up of an eye painted on a weathered yellow clay figure lying in dry grass.
The painted eye of a fallen figure.
Seen from behind, a man reaches up to touch a dark stone image hung with garlands.
A hand raised to a stone image.
Two dark figures hung with flower garlands, standing above a wall with trees behind them.
Two garlanded figures above a shrine wall.
Two painted clay figures with ornate headdresses, half-hidden in tall dry grass.
Two figures, half-hidden in tall grass.
A large crowd gathered tightly together at a festival.
A crowd gathers at a festival.
An iron spear set upright against the trunk of a tree.
An iron spear set against a tree.
A weathered painted figure with a feathered crown, surrounded by dry grass.
A weathered figure among dry grass.

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Studio
Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu