One of Dutch filmmaker Johan van der Keuken’s most beautiful cinematic poems, The Eye Above the Well assays India’s spiritual and economic situation, moving from the city to the countryside in Kerala as he focuses on the essence of the region’s culture. Captured without commentary by his gliding camera are a cacophony of distinctly non-western sights and sounds: bustling city streets, serene landscapes of the surrounding countryside, a family preparing for dinner, an elderly actor performing his mythological drama, a modest country moneylender traveling from village to village, young girls at their singing lessons. What emerges from these encounters is not only a highly evocative sense of lived experience but a poetic vision that gracefully embodies what Cahiers du cinéma has called “the aesthetic of diversity.”