VIKALP @ PRITHVI
Is a collaboration between Vikalp: Films for Freedom and Prithvi Theatre. We bring you a curated selection of short films, animation films and documentary films on the last Monday of every month at Prithvi House.
ON MONDAY, 27th APRIL, 2009
Starting 7 PM
Film screening followed by a session with filmmakers Kavita Pai and Hansa Thapliyal
Yi As Akh Padshah Bai
(There was a Queen…)
105 minutes, Documentary film
In Kashmiri, Urdu, Hindi and English with English subtitles
Credits
Directed by Kavita Pai and Hansa Thapliyal |Produced by Other Media Communications | Cameraperson Ranu Ghosh |Sound by Gissy Michael | Editing by Gouri Patwardhan | Music by Manish J. Tipu
Directors’ Note
"Give us guns and we'll play our role!"
This is what Farhana had to say, less than a week after her sister was buried.
Farhana's sister Shahnaza, and her friend, Ulfat, victims of 'crossfire', were barely seventeen when they died - as old as the tehreek that exploded into existence in 1989, shattering forever the peace of the Valley, turning it into one of the most critical conflict zones in the world.
Over these eighteen years, flashes of intensified conflict and bouts of negotiations have followed one another with monotonous regularity in Kashmir. Newspapers and television channels manufacture predictable binary images of conflict – angry men and weeping women, misguided innocents and fundamentalist separatists, victims and aggressors. Over and above these is the image that erases all differences – the Kashmiri as terrorist.
When we set out to make a film on peace initiatives by women in Kashmir, the question uppermost in our minds was, do women really want peace, as opposed to men? At what cost? Can 'peace' still the turmoil at the heart of every Kashmiri? What are the conditions that beget violence, that drive young men to take to the gun? What then, are the conditions for peace?
It felt strange to speak to women, only women, ignoring the other half. So we spoke to a few men – one a former militant, another who had sent his son for training across the border with his blessings, a third, a school master, who lost his son in a gun battle only to realize he was a militant, a fourth, a school boy, whose brother was killed in crossfire – we spoke to men and realized that while every story in Kashmir has the power to shock and move, while the stories of both men and women were compelling in their honesty, in their rage, in their grief, in their helplessness, in their contempt, in their fierce refusal to forget; the women's stories are markedly different in their determination to survive, to nurture.
It is through these women – proud, strong, with an undying zest for life – that we try to explore what peace means and how it can come about in Kashmir.
* No Entry Fee. Limited Seating.
* Prithvi House, Opposite Prithvi Theatre, Janki Kutir, Juhu, Mumbai.
* The registration desk will be open between 6 pm to 6:45 pm only.
* For more information, write to us at vikalp.prithvi@gmail.com
*For screening queries contact Anand Patwardhan 9819882244 Lynne Henry 9820896425
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