[Reader-list] [Announcements] Screening of Words on Water

[Monica Narula]

Words on Water a film by Sanjay Kak

Dec 26, 2002 Thu / 7 pm / Main Auditorium
Habitat Centre, Lodi Road, New Delhi

Documentary / 2002 / 85 mins / Video / English (with subtitles)

Synopsis

Shasan valo, sun lo aaj! Hamare gaon mein hamaara raaj (Listen to us, 
you who rule! Our villages, we control) A boat carrying that cargo of 
defiance begins an urgent journey through the Narmada Valley.

For more than 15 years people of this valley have resisted a series 
of massive dams on the river, and in their struggle have gradually 
exposed the deceptive heart of India's development politics.

But this is 1999, and the Supreme Court of India has just lifted its 
six-year long legal stay on the construction of the Sardar Sarovar 
dam. The resistance finds itself pushed to its most critical phase Š

This is a struggle that has forged unusual alliances. Adivasis in the 
hills, farmers from the Nimad plain, sand quarriers and fishermen on 
the river, and middle-class activists. They are ranged against the 
powerful apparatus of this chosen model of development - Magistrates, 
Police Commissioners, Ministers, the World Bank, and in this era of 
privatization, even Multinational Corporations.

This is a dialogue with authority that is usually conducted across 
barricades. But through the tumult and slogans, we make our way to 
the transactions between power and powerlessness, between truth and 
untruth.

Shot and edited over a period of three years, Words on Water is a 
film about sustained non-violent resistance, in a world where the use 
of violence has become the arbiter of political debate. It's about 
the satyagraha, the
assertion of truth, that almost joyous defiance, which empowers the 
people as they struggle for their rights, yet saves them from the 
ultimate humiliation of violence

Credits

Director : Sanjay Kak / Edited by : Sameera Jain & Reena Mohan / 
Photography : Ranjan Palit & Sanjay Kak / Location Sound : Samina 
Mishra / Music : Rahul Ram Amit Kilam Asheem Chakravarty
-- 
Monica Narula
Sarai:The New Media Initiative
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054
www.sarai.net

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