Housing
The Doomed Fight to Save Delhi's 'Magician's Ghetto'
A new documentary explores the cultural cost of slum redevelopment.
Puran Bhat has lived in a slum in West Delhi for 45 years. He's a puppeteer—a lumbering, 62-year-old performer with a handlebar mustache and more puppets than he can count (each of which has a distinct personality, he says fondly). He's also a member of a small commune of Delhi street artists fighting to keep their homes amid a tidal wave of redevelopment.
Tomorrow We Disappear—a Kickstarter-funded documentary film that premiered at the Tribeca Film festival in April—tells the story of Bhat and his community. It's now making the rounds at film festivals in Canada, Australia, Korea and around the U.S.