Upcoming Events

OUR FAMILY and STUDENT FILMS
Date: Wednesday, Feb 13, 2008
Time: 6.30pm
Venue: Convention Centre, Naoroji Campus, TISS

Screening of: 4 short Public Service Advertisement films made by the students of CMCS. Don’t, Use Me, Speak Out and Quit Now
followed by a screening of the documentary
Our Family,
Tamil with English subtitles, 56 mins, October 2007. Produced by CMCS.

What does it mean to cross that line which sharply divides us on the  basis of gender? To free oneself of the socially constructed onus of being male? Is there life beyond a hetero-normative family? Set in
Tamilnadu, India, 'Our Family' brings together excerpts from Nirvanam, a one person performance, by Pritham K. Chakravarthy about the act of liberating oneself from the male body and transforming oneself to a female; and a family of three generations of trans-gendered female subjects, belonging to the community called Aravanis (aka Hijras, in some parts of India) bound together by ties of adoption. This narrative bears witness to the tumultuous journey towards a reinvented selfhood, a journey fraught with violence, exploitation, affection and courage. Weaving together performance, life histories and everyday life, it problematises the divides between 'us' and 'them'. http://ourfamily2007.wordpress.com/

Written and directed by KP Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro
Camera KP Jayasankar
Editing and Sound Design by KP Jayasankar and Anjali Monteiro

There will be a discussion with all the filmmakers after the screenings.


Past Events

INDIA UNTOUCHED- Stories of a People Apart
108 minutes. Hindi, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalm with English sub-titles
Directed by Stalin K., Produced by Drishti, Presented by Navsarjan

“INDIA UNTOUCHED-Stories of a People Apart” is perhaps the most comprehensive look at Untouchability ever undertaken on film. Director Stalin K. spent four years traveling the length and breadth of the country to expose the continued oppression of ‘Dalits,’ the ‘broken people’ who suffer under a 4000 year-old religious system. The film introduces leading Benares scholars who interpret Hindu scriptures to mean that Dalits ‘have no right’ to education, and Rajput farmers who proudly proclaim that no Dalit may sit in their presence, and that the police must seek their permission before pursuing cases of atrocities. The film captures many ‘firsts-on-film,’ such as Dalits being forced to dismount from their cycles and remove their shoes when in the upper caste part of the village. It exposes the continuation of caste practices and Untouchability in Sikhism, Christianity and Islam, and even amongst the communists in Kerala. Dalits themselves are not let off the hook: within Dalits, sub-castes practice Untouchability on the ‘lower’ sub-castes, and a Harijan boy refuses to drink water from a Valmiki boy. The viewer hears that Untouchability is an urban phenomenon as well, inflicted upon a leading medical surgeon and in such hallowed institutions as JNU, where a Brahmin boy builds a partition so as not to look upon his Dalit roommate in the early morning. A section on how newspaper matrimonial columns are divided according to caste presents urban Indians with an uncomfortable truth: marriage is the leading perpetuator of caste in India. But the film highlights signs of hope, too: the powerful tradition of Dalit drumming is used to call people to the struggle, and a young Dalit girl holds her head high after pulling water from her village well for the first time in her life.
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Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla
by Sabeena Gadihoke
(Mapin/Parzor Foundation, 2006)
Illustrated Presentation & Discussion

THREE WOMEN AND A CAMERA
by Sabeena Gadihoke
(Mapin/Parzor Foundation, 2006)
Illustrated Presentation & Discussion