Filmmaker Focus: Jaya - Screening and Q&A at The Share Centre

Venue: The Share Centre | 88 Stow Hill, Newport, NP20 4DW
Date: 14/08/2026
Doors: 18:00 Close: 22:00
Entry: Free

Urban Circle presents a special Filmmaker Focus evening with Prof. G D Jayalakshmi, commonly known as Jaya — an award-winning filmmaker, researcher, media consultant and Professor of Creative Practice at Edinburgh Napier University.

Jaya’s work moves across documentary, creative practice, cultural memory, dance, ecology and cross-cultural storytelling. She has worked in film, television and radio, including 12 years at the BBC making documentaries in arts, education and culture, before running her own production company, Jayamac Productions. Her films have screened internationally and received several awards.

For this special event, we will screen two of Jaya’s films: Dance of the Seasons (2023) and Going Home (2018), followed by a conversation with the filmmaker.

Dance of the Seasons is a lyrical documentary dance film exploring India’s six seasons and how they have been affected by global warming and climate change. Based on Ritu Samhara — The March of the Seasons — an epic Sanskrit poem by Kalidasa dating from around 400 AD, the film uses Bharatanatyam, classical music, poetry and visual storytelling to reflect on climate, culture and the natural world.

The film features choreography and dance by Padmini Upadhya, with actor Hari Mackinnon appearing as scholar and activist Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, whose 1942 translation of the text was created while he was in solitary confinement during the struggle for Indian independence against British rule.

Going Home is a personal and reflective short film in which Jaya revisits a three-day train journey across India. Once, her mother travelled from North India back to South India to visit her parents; forty years later, Jaya, now living in the West, re-lives that journey and asks what “going home” means.

The pairing of these two films creates space for a rich conversation about memory, belonging, migration, climate change, classical Indian art, and the way filmmaking can connect personal histories with wider cultural and political questions.

This is a chance to experience independent filmmaking, meet the filmmaker, and take part in a conversation about creativity, identity, culture and storytelling.

Dance of the Seasons
Year: 2023
Runtime: approx. 42 mins
Directed by: G D Jayalakshmi
Subtitles: English

Going Home
Year: 2018
Runtime: approx. 28 mins
Directed by: G D Jayalakshmi
Subtitles: English