At first glance, the Kathputli Colony looks like any other Indian slum. Flies swarm its putrid canals. Children climb on drooping electrical wires. Construction cranes and an ever-expanding metro line loom on the horizon.
But Kathputli is a place of fading traditions. For half a century 2,800 artist families have called its narrow alleyways home; there are jugglers and acrobats, puppeteers and painters, folk singers and magicians, many of whom are well-respected artists in India and abroad.
In 2009 the New Delhi government sold Kathputli to developers for a fraction of its worth. The land is to be bulldozed to make room for the city’s first-ever skyscraper, The Raheja Phoenix.
Tomorrow We Disappear, directed by Jimmy Goldblum and Adam Weber, follows three of Kathputli’s most-talented performers as they wrangle with the reality of their approaching eviction. The story begins with the fate of thousands of marginalized performers in Delhi, India. The film chronicles a turning point in the lives of these performers, with the hopes of anticipating what’s to come in India’s future and preserving what’s being left behind.
Jimmy Goldblum began his career as an interactive director and producer. In 2008, Goldblum won the Emmy for “New Approaches to Documentary” for Live Hope Love, an interactive documentary he produced for the Pulitzer Center. Goldblum also wrote, filmed, and produced “The Institute for Human Continuity,” an online narrative for Sony Pictures’ film 2012, which is widely considered one of the most successful transmedia campaigns of all time. Through his production company, Old Friend (oldfriend.tv), Goldblum has directed commercials for Google, Budweiser, and Nature’s Variety, and his interactive films have won an Emmy, a Webby for Best Art Project, and been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, and USA Today.
Adam Weber is an editor, director, and writer who has worked for major film and TV studios in both New York and Los Angeles. Weber edited Michel Gondry’s Is the Man Who is Tall Also Happy?, was an assistant editor on Gondry’s The Green Hornet, and previously worked as the apprentice editor on Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds.
