[Reader-list] Announcement: Expressions in Freedom: Intl. Women's Day

[Kavita Joshi]

TO: LIST MODERATOR
FOR: POSTING ON READERLIST-ANNOUNCEMENTS

The IIC Asia Project & the International Association of Women in Radio &
Television (IAWRT)
invite you to

EXPRESSIONS IN FREEDOM
a festival of films by Asian women filmmakers
8TH | 9TH | 10TH MARCH 2005 at the INDIA INTERNATIONAL CENTRE, DELHI

'Expressions in Freedom' is a festival celebrating documentary films by
Asian women. Launching on the International Women's Day, 8th March, the
festival seeks to open up a space for debate on creative processes enriched
by women's quest for freedoms of expression.

The festival features films from 5 countries - India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan,
Palestine & Nepal. Apart from documentaries, the festival includes animation
films, talks and
special presentations. Films will be followed by discussions with the
directors, if present.

IAWRT is a non-profit organization of women working in electronic and allied
media. It seeks to enhance the electronic media by ensuring that women's
views and values become an integral part of programme making.
( www.iawrt.org )

ENTRY TO THE FESTIVAL IS OPEN TO ALL
________________________________

SCHEDULE*: 8th March 2005, Tuesday

10:30 AM INAUGURATION
incl. screening of
LINE OF CONTROL a film by Surekha 3 min / 2003 / India
An ant moves within a boundary. It is a mere pen mark. And yet the ant
hesitates to cross the line of control and come out of the boundary. Will
it, finally? Or wont it? This spontaneous work examines how one behaves when
confronted with imaginary boundaries.

11:30 AM: BREAK

12:00 NOON UNLIMITED GIRLS by Paromita Vohra 94 min / 2002 / India
 Reflective in tone and playful in its form, 'UnLimited Girls' asks
questions about feminism in our lives: why must women lead double lives,
being feminist but not saying they are? How do we make sense of love and
anger, doubt and confusion, the personal and the political in this
enterprise of pushing the boundaries, of being un-limited? The tale is told
through the conversations of a narrator called Fearless who encounters
diverse characters - feminists, yuppies, college kids, a woman cab driver, a
priest, academics - all talking of their engagements with feminism.

01:45 PM: LUNCH

02:30 PM: UNTIL WHEN.  by Dahna Abourahme 76 min / 2004 / Palestine, USA
 Set during the current Intifada, this documentary follows four Palestinian
families living in Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. Fadi, just 13,
cares for his 4 younger brothers; the Hammash family believe in living life
with humour and passion; Sana, a single woman endures long commutes to do
community work; and Emad and Hanan are a young couple trying to shield their
daughter from the harsh realities of the occupation. Through their joys and
sorrows, 'Until When.' paints an intimate portrait of Palestinian lives
today.

03:45 PM: BREAK

04:00 PM MY MOTHER INDIA A film by Safina Uberoi 52 min / 2002 / Australia
 This film tells the story of a mixed marriage set against the tumultuous
backdrop of modern Indian history. It focuses on the filmmaker's own quirky
family: an Indian Sikh father who collects kitsch calendars; an Australian
mother who hangs her knickers out to dry in front of the horrified
neighbours in Delhi; a grandfather who was a self-styled Guru' and a
seething grandmother who grows to despise him. What begins as a quirky and
humorous documentary about an eccentric, multicultural upbringing unfolds
into a complex commentary on the social, political and religious events of
the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 that changed the destinies of the family.

05:00 PM TALK: Uma Chakravarti: Alternative Spaces for Alternatives Texts
(30 min)

05:30 PM: BREAK

06:30 PM LADIES SPECIAL A film by Nidhi Tuli 29 mins / -- / India
 'Ladies Special' travels on a Mumbai train reserved wholly for women. For a
brief while, the camera, crew and viewers become part of the spontaneous
community of women that this train has engendered. With women boarding the
same bogey daily, lives are shared, vegetables are chopped, birth ceremonies
are celebrated, and clothes bought, as the 50 km journey becomes a space
suspended unto itself. Many women speak of the commute as a cherished time
when they can be themselves, instead of wives and mothers and workers and
housewives. Ladies Special is a celebration of their lives.

followed by GIRL SONG A film by Vasudha Joshi 29 min / -- / India
This film enters the life of Anjum Katyal, blues singer, poet and mother,
capturing her voice as she performs the blues in her home city of Kolkata,
as she reads from her journal to her daughter, as she converses with her
mother and her daughter about the multi-religious, multi-cultural heritage
that she so proudly owns to, and as she talks of confronting the climate of
hostility and distrust towards minorities spreading through the country. In
her interactions with her mother and her daughter, we see how a cultural
identity proudly woven from many strands is increasingly under threat from
narrow and exclusionist definitions of identity.

followed by INDIA CABARET A film by Mira Nair 60 min / -- / India
 By focusing on a group of female strippers who work in a nightclub in the
suburbs of Bombay, 'India Cabaret' explores the "respectable" and "corrupt"
stereotypes that typify women in contemporary Indian society. The film tells
their story, relating their hopes and fears while respecting their pride and
resilience.  In the process, it reveals the rules and double standards of a
deeply patriarchal society.

************

SCHEDULE* FOR: 9th March 2005, Wednesday

10:30 AM Sri Lankan films from the Reconciliation Series, and a talk with
Sharmini Boyle.
including a scrng. of: RAJESHWARI Sharmini Boyle, Siyangka Nawaz 25 min /
2003 / Sri Lanka
This documentary is part of a television series that explore situations of
conflict and their impact on the lives of the Sri Lankan people. The series,
as the name suggests, promotes reconciliation and peace. 'Rajeshwari' is the
story of the experiences of a woman who was affected by the conflict in Sri
Lanka.
The programme also includes screenings of shorts (5 - 10 mins each) from
other episodes of the series, like:- Women Waging Peace (mothers and war)-
Defiant Art (women and language)

11:30 AM: BREAK

12:00 NOON MANJUBEN TRUCK DRIVER A film by Sherna Dastur 52 min / 2002 /
India
 Manjuben has broken the gender stereotypes that are part of the social
landscape she inhabits. She has created an identity for herself against
social, cultural and economic odds, commanding respect from the community.
This identity is deliberately 'male' - that of a macho trucker, drawn from
several popular notions of maleness. Yet Manjuben defies simple
categorization. Though she lives a free life compared to the other women in
her society, she is just as patriarchal as the next person. In other words,
Manjuben is no crusader.

 OF LOVE & LAND A film by Samina Mishra 24 min / 2001 / India
 Randhir Singh and Darshan Kaur's grandchildren grow up together in a
prosperous home in a village near Amritsar. The children - 3 girls, 3 boys -
go to the same school, eat together and often even play together. Yet there
are borders that demarcate their lives. Set against the backdrop of an
alarming and continuously declining sex ratio in the region, 'Of Love and
Land' examines the boundaries that limit the lives of little girls.

01:45 PM: LUNCH

02:30 PM TALK: Shohini Ghosh: "Documentaries of Self and Sexuality" (30 min)

03:00 PM IN THE FLESH A film by Bishakha Datta 53 min / 2002 / India
 An intimate account of what it is like to be in prostitution, this film
revolves around 3 people: Shabana, a street-smart woman working the dark
highways outside Bombay; Uma, an aging theatre actress who lives in a
brothel in Calcutta where she earlier worked; and Bhaskar, a trans-gendered
person who sells sex to men. We see their lives unfold - their workplaces,
their stories, their daughters, mothers, lovers, passions... We see them as
they pick up customers, fight AIDS in their communities, battle violence
through collective action. We see them as they are - human beings struggling
for a space in society.

04:00 PM: BREAK

04:30 PM GUHYA A film by Kirtana Kumar 55 min / 2000 / India
 Today in India, we live in an aggressively patriarchal time. Modernity is
equated with homogeneity and the complex nature of female sexuality is
offered up at the altar of Nationhood. But thanks to the co-existence of
diverse sexual and socio religious practices, there still exist residual
memories of a past where the Goddess is worshipped, and communities where
the female principle is considered life-affirming. This film asserts that
our attempts to eradicate such practices in the name of development are born
of our essentially patriarchal mores.

followed by ORANGE a film by Geetanjali Rao 4 mins / 2003 / India
 'Orange' is a conversation between two women about love and relationships,
over a drink on a rain drenched evening. The film uses animation in vivid
shades of orange to express moods and feelings.

05:40PM: BREAK

06:30 PM TALK: Patricia Uberoi: "The Family in Media: Shaping our views"
(15 min)

followed by WHEN MOTHER COMES HOME FOR CHRISTMAS A film by Nilita Vachani
109 min / 1995 / India, Greece, Germany
 Josephine Perera is a migrant worker from Sri Lanka who has spent the last
ten years taking care of the families of others. She currently works in
Greece, lavishing care on 2 year-old Isadora whose own mother works in
Paris. Josephine's children meanwhile have been left to relatives and
orphanages - she hasn't seen them in ten years. Finally she has a work visa
and can travel back to them for Christmas. Through her story, we witness the
restructuring of an entire society where women have become the breadwinners
in a foreign land. Ironically it is their gender functions that lead them to
'economic freedom', though never in the context of their own families and
culture.

8:30 PM: CLOSE

**********************

SCHEDULE FOR*: 10th March 2005, Thursday

10:00 AM BORN TO SING by Shikha Jhingan 44 min / 2002 / India
Born to Sing is a musical journey with four Mirasans, who sing life-cycle
songs for their patrons in Punjab. The film explores a rich musical and oral
tradition kept alive by these women across religious boundaries. What is the
nature of their relationship with their land-owning patrons? What happens
when Punjabi pop music takes the entertainment industry by storm? The films
grapples with these concerns faced by women who find themselves shunted out
of their expressive traditions. At another level, the film also evokes
memories of partition and the resilience of the composite culture of the
Malwa region of Punjab.

followed by THE BROKEN SPINE A film by Ein Lall 30 min / 2001 / India
Nalini Malani is one of India's leading painters and installation artist.
Her work is political and gendered, even as it is subtle and layered. This
film portrays the conflicting yet complementary tones in her work. We see
life in the Lohar Chawl where Malani has her studio; we see the people that
power her work; we see what moves her. The film travels from work to work,
from painting to installation to beachside where Malani draws on the
shifting sands. Formally, it creates juxtapositions that draw the viewer
into the inner world of the artist.

11:30 AM: BREAK

12:00 NOON  A FEW THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER A film by Anjali Panjabi 30 min /
2002 / India
 Mirabai, a sixteenth century poetess is a cultural icon in India. Her
images and stories swamp our popular culture. She was a princess who
rebelled. Her poems versed in a religious idiom speak of personal choices
and questioned the social hierarchies of her time. The conflicts expressed
in her poetry however, do not tally with popular notions that choose to see
her only as a pious saint. The film explores some of these contradictions.
It travels through the towns and villages and vast deserts of Rajasthan in
search of Mira. On the journey, it discovers the many ways in which Mirabai
still sings to us.

followed by  THREE WOMEN AND A CAMERA by Sabeena Gadihoke 56 min / 1998 /
India
 Homai Vyarawalla is India's first professional woman photographer, whose
career spanned three decades from the 1930s; Sheba Chhachhi and Dayanita
Singh are contemporary photographers who started work in the 1980s.
Vyarawalla's work underscores the euphoria of the birth of a nation, while
Chhachhi and Singh grapple with the complexities and undelivered promises of
the post independence era. This film debates the shifts in their concerns
regarding representation and subject-camera relationships. It seeks to
contextualise their work through their photographs and explores how their
identity as women shapes this work in turn.

01:45 PM: LUNCH

2:30 PM HINA A film by Beena Sarwar 8 min / 2004 / Pakistan
 Hina is the first girl in her family to attend college and contemplate a
career rather than marriage. But this apparent freedom has come at a
terrible cost: it was the death of Hina's father (the family's sole
breadwinner) that forced her mother to take charge of her own life and
family in a society which frowns upon women stepping outside the home even
for education. The conflicts that 17 year-old Hina faces as her horizons
expand lend poignancy to her aspirations. She is determined to not only to
become self reliant but also to care for her ailing mother once her 4 older
sisters marry and leave.

followed by  DAUGHTERS OF EVEREST By Ramyata Limbu, Sapana Sakya 56 min /
2004 / Nepal, USA
 In 2000, the first ever expedition of Nepalese women to climb the Everest
was organised. Although the Sherpa people of Nepal are legendary for their
unmatched skills in mountaineering, Sherpa women are discouraged from
climbing, relegated instead to the support roles in the climbing industry.
Told from a women's perspective, rarely seen on Everest or off it, this film
gives a close-up account of the expedition and its impact on the lives of
the women - not just the climbers but the women of Nepal.

03:35 PM: BREAK

04:00 PM PRESENTATION: Women of Deccan Development Society - Community Media
Trust (Idpapally Mollamma and Edakupalli Sooremma): A case for autonomous
community media.
including the screening of
TEN WOMEN & A CAMERA By the women of DDS - CMT 9 mins / 2003 / India
 The Deccan Development Society's Community Media Trust has been training
rural women to use video to articulate their concerns. Making a film thus
becomes a process of learning to speak up, to be heard, be counted. Made by
the women themselves, this film looks how the act of making films for over
six years and this process of filmmaking itself has impacted on them and
their lives.
 This presentation by the women of DDS will also include clips from their
other works, like:- Sangam Shot, BT Cotton, and other excerpts

05:00 PM WHO WILL MEND MY FUTURE : Plan India + a team of 12 year olds -
Hemlata and Savita 10 min / -- / India
 During adolescence, young girls are denied the information they need to
understand the changes in their bodies. When she is experiencing acute
confusion, the teenage girl is fed a steady diet of mumbo jumbo. Instead of
information, all she gets is stony silence from her teachers. Instead of
counsel, all she gets from her mother is yet more restrictions on her scarce
freedoms. This film shows how such attitudes wreak havoc in the lives of
teenage girls, especially those living in conservative communities. An
animation film, it has been directed by 12 year old girls as part of a
workshop.
The film will be accompanied by an informal presentation where the young
filmmakers and representatives from PLAN India will share their experiences
on making and screening this film.

05:30PM: BREAK

06:30 PM YEH GULISTAN HAMARA A film by Fareeda Mehta 30 min / 2003 / India
 The film looks at communities that live 'behind walls', and the possible
cultural, political and economic reasons for doing so. Within 'mixed
societies' people may be united by economic necessity but prejudices often
run deeper than the words uttered in interviews. The film works with images
from a small town magic show and from 'video' to build a narrative of
longing and a socially constructed amnesia that feeds on jingoistic
patriotism.

followed by  I LOVE MY INDIA Directed by Tejal Shah 10 min / 2003 / India
 After the Godhra incident in February 2002, India witnessed the killing of
over 3000 Muslims in Gujarat. A year after the genocide, this film takes
place at a popular public recreation space - a balloon-target shooting
stall. Dark and bitterly funny, it uses the opinion poll format to satirise
our generalised understanding of social and political injustices; and
critiques the practice of electoral democracy in India by employing the
metaphor of random target practice.

followed by  SOMETHING LIKE A WAR A film by Deepa Dhanraj 53 min/ -- / India
 Launched in 1952, India's family planning programme was formulated in
collaboration with Western population control experts. It is based on the
assumption that irresponsible, anti-national breeding by the poor is the
main cause of the nation's backwardness and that population control is the
magic key to success. Despite brutal coercion, the programme has failed in
its objective of drastically reducing the birth rate. The film traces the
history of the programme, exposing the cynicism, corruption and brutality
that characterise its implementation. It questions the programme from the
perspective of women, who are its primary victims.

8:30 PM: CLOSE
*****************
* schedule subject to changes; please confirm at venue.