[Reader-list] [Announcements] [infosouth] Invitation [FilmsForFreedom] Free Speech & Fearless Listening
Kavita Joshi [Impulse]
kj.impulse at gmail.com
Fri Feb 17 15:15:54 IST 2006
INVITATION TO:
Dear Friend
The Delhi Film Archive and Films for Freedom, in association with Max Mueller Bhavan and the Sarai Programme at CSDS, Delhi take pleasure in inviting you to "Free Speech & Fearless Listening: The encounter with censorship in South Asia".
The three day event to discuss the challenges confronting cultural producers in the South Asia region will be held at the Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institute), Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi from February 22-24, 2006. The event is being supported by Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Jamia Millia Islamia (Central University).
Independent documentary filmmakers, journalists, writers and other professionals have struggled to create spaces for images, words and ideas that find little support with governments or market-driven corporations. Meanwhile the transformed nature of information flows at the cusp of the late 20th and early 21st Century has rendered inadequate national territories as exclusive sites of study or debate. As newer technologies of production and dissemination generate an unprecedented amount of information, there are simultaneously greater demands for restrictions on speech from state, non-state and corporate players. The proposed 'roundtable' is an attempt to acknowledge and understand the circulation and curtailment of speech in the South Asia region and will attempt to engage with the transformed mediascape to understand how images and information are being created or erased.
Films for Freedom and the Delhi Film Archive initiative began a nationwide movement of more than 200 documentary filmmakers who came together in 2004 to protest against the Mumbai International Film Festival's (MIFF) decision to introduce a clause demanding censorship clearance for Indian filmmakers.. Filmmakers responded with a boycott, and the staging of an alternative festival. 'VIKALP - Films for Freedom' led the filmmakers to engage in a range of activities that created an awareness of both documentary films and an understanding about the overt and covert operations of censorship bodies. Today, Films for Freedom remains a vibrant platform for a diverse range of speech and anti-censorship related activities.
We look forward to your participation and contribution in what we hope will be an on-going conversation. Please find attached the Proposed Schedule and List of Participants. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at
delhifilmarchive at yahoo.com
delhifilmarchive at gmail.com
Delhi Film Archive
( Amar Kanwar / Anupama Srinivasan / Atul Gupta / Gargi Sen / Gurvinder Singh/ Kavita Joshi/ Nakul Sood / Rahul Roy / Raj Baruah/ Ranjani Mazumdar/ Saba Dewan / Sanjay Kak / Sanjay Maharishi / Sabeena Gadihoke / Sameera Jain/ Sherna Dastur/ Shikha Jhingan/ Shohini Ghosh / Shubhradeep Chakravorty / Uma Devi)
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Tentative Schedule (as on 16 Feb)
Free Speech & Fearless Listening:
The encounter with censorship in South Asia
Feb 22-24 2006, New Delhi
l 21 Feb 2006 / Tue / Sarai CSDS
4:00 - 7:00 pm Curtain Raiser
Andres Veiel (Munich) Jitman Basnet (Kathmandu/Delhi) Malathi Maithri (Pondicherry) Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Shuddhabrata Sengupta Chair
l 22 Feb 2006 / Wed / Max Mueller Bhawan
I 9:30 - 10:00 Opening Remarks : Rahul Roy DFA
II 10:00 - 11:30 "Reports from the Region"
Hassan Zaidi (Karachi) Jitman Basnet (Kathmandu/Delhi) Prasanna Vithanage (Colombo) Tanvir Mokammel (Dhaka) Tenzin Tsundoe (Dharamsala) Video Intervention: May Nyein (Burma) presented by Nem Davies Amar Kanwar Chair
tea break
III 12:00 - 1:30 "Framed by the law"
Lawrence Liang (Bangalore) Sara Hossein (Dhaka)
Intervention: Shahid Amin (Delhi)
discussants: Jitman Basnet / Prasanna Vithanage / Hassan Zaidi
lunch
IV 2:30 - 4:00 "Court Encounters"
PA Sebastian (Mumbai) Sara Hossein (Dhaka)
discussants: Lawrence Liang / Prasanna Vithanage / Prashant Bhushan Chair
tea break
V 4:30 - 6:00 "Silences from Srinagar & Shillong"
Aijaz Hussain (Srinagar) P G Rasul (Srinagar) Robin S Ngangom (Shillong)
Tarun Bhartiya (Shillong) Written Intervention: Parvaiz Bukhari (Srinagar) Sanjay Kak Chair
6:00 - Screening:
Black Box Germany (102 min) dir: Andres Veiel director present
discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta
l 23 Feb 2006 / Thu / Max Mueller Bhawan
I 10:00 - 11:00 "Private" Censorship
Andres Veiel (Munich) Shuddhabrata Sengupta Chair
tea break
II 11:30 - 1:30 "Locating Hate & Censorship"
Deepak Mehta (Delhi) Sara Hossein (Dhaka) Shohini Ghosh (Delhi) Intervention: Arundhati Roy (Delhi) Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Delhi) Jawed Naqvi (Delhi) Dilip Simeon Chair
lunch
III 2:30 - 4:00 "Writing the body and mind"
Malathi Maithri (Pondicherry) Sanjay Srivastava (Delhi)
In Conversation: Shuddhabrata Sengupta & Shohini Ghosh
tea break
IV 4:30 - 6:00 "Fiction in the Censors Web"
Anurag Kashyap (Mumbai) Tanvir Mokammel (Dhaka) Vimukthi Jayasundara (Colombo/Paris) Prasanna Vithanage (Colombo) Ranjani Mazumdar Chair
6:00 - Screening:
Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land)
dir: Vimukthi Jayasundara director present
discussant: Gurvinder Singh
l 24 Feb 2006 / Fri / Max Mueller Bhawan
I 10:00 - 11:30 "Voices made invisible"
Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Ravi Kumar (Chennai) Anil Chamadia (Delhi) Gargi Sen Chair
tea break
II 12:00 - 1:30 "The Business of Censorship"
CP Chandrashekhar (Delhi) Jawed Naqvi (Delhi) Najam Sethi (Lahore) TBC
Paranjoy Guhathakurta (Delhi)
lunch
III 2:30 - 4:00 Towards a "Counter Culture"
Amar Kanwar (Delhi) Hassan Zaidi (Karachi) Gurvinder Singh (Delhi) Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Mukul Mangalik (Delhi) Saba Dewan Chair
tea break
IV 4:30 - 6:00 Open Space
6:00 - Screening:
Purahanda Kaluwara (Death on a Full Moon Day)
dir: Prasanna Vithanage director present
Brief notes on participants
Free Speech & Fearless Listening:
The encounter with censorship in South Asia
Feb 22-24 2006, New Delhi
Aijaz Hussain, Srinagar currently writes on politics and business for India Today and Business Standard from Srinagar. Before this, he wrote for about four years for the Daily Excelsior, a regional newspaper published from Jammu. He has also worked briefly for CNBC-TV18 television network. Besides these he has been reporting on assignment for Associated Press. Aijaz Hussain has an MA in Mass Communication & Journalism (1999).
Anil Chamadia, New Delhi is a writer and columnist, who has been a commentator on political and social issues for almost all the major Hindi dailies - Jansatta, Navbharat Times, Hindustan, Amar Ujala and Dainik Bhaskar. He also writes a column on the electronic media for the literary magazine Kathadesh. As a Special Correspondent/Writer with Business India Television's TVI channel, he has also produced more than 1000 news bulletins for prime-time news.
Anurag Kashyap, Mumbai, is a writer turned director and his writing credits include several Hindi films like Paisa Vasool (2004), Jung (2000), Kaun (1999) and Satya (1998). He has written dialogues for Main Aisa Hi Hoon, (2005), Yuva (2004), Nayak : The Real Hero (2001) and Shool (1999). Anurag Kashyap's directorial debut Paanch (Five) (2003) has been twice refused a clearance certificate by the censor board. His subsequent film Black Friday (2004) on the Mumbai blasts too has run into censor problems.
C.P.Chandrashekhar bio awaited
Deepak Mehta, Delhi, is a Reader in the Department of Sociology, University of Delhi. He is the author of Work, Ritual, Biography: A Muslim Community in North India. (OUP, 1977). Since 1994 he has been researching on violence between Hindus and Muslims in Bombay.
Hassan Zaidi, Karachi, is an award winning journalist and filmmaker, who has been associated with the Pakistani monthly Herald, Geo TV, Singapore's Channel News Asia, and Star News, and has won the All Pakistan Newspaper Society award for excellence in journalism thrice. He currently works as a producer / correspondent for NBC News and writes for a number of international papers (including India Today), and has produced radio packages for the BBC's Urdu service. He has directed a number of documentaries, music videos and shorts, and the feature film Raat Chali Hai Jhoom Ke. He is currently Director of the KaraFilm - Karachi International Film Festival.
Jawed Naqvi, New Delhi is a veteran journalist, and former Chief Reporter of Gulf News and News Editor of Khaleej Times, who has also worked for many years with Reuters in Delhi. He has covered wars from frontlines in Iran, Iraq, Western Sahara, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Jaffna. After the nuclear tests of 1998, he has embarked on a mission of cross-border journalism, campaigning against nuclear madness and human rights abuses. He writes as a freelance journalist for the Karachi Dawn and the Dhaka New Age. occasionaly write for tehelka. Occasional analyst for TV channels
Jitman Basnet, Kathmandu, is a lawyer and journalist by profession, and has been editor and publisher of Sagarmatha Times a national monthly magazine published from Kathmandu, and Cine Hotline. In Sep 2002, he was arrested by the Maoists but eventually released. In Feb 2004 Jitman Basnet was arrested by the Royal Nepal Army and was in detention for about 10 months. The reason for his arrest was an article that he had written about the army's violation of human rights. Subsequent to his release he was forced to escape from Nepal, and at present lives in exile in Delhi.
Lawrence Liang, Bangalore, is a researcher at the Alternative Law Forum a collective of lawyers who work on various aspects of law, legality and power.. Lawrence has been working on a research project on the politics of intellectual property "Intellectual Property & the Knowledge/Culture Commons" in collaboration with Sarai: CSDS, and is also very interested in the intersection of law and culture. He has recently completed a monograph on censorship and cinema in India called The Public is watching (for PSBT).
Malathi Maithri, Pondicherry, is a Tamil poet (and activist) whose poems are considered highly inventive in the Tamil context. Her published collections include Sankaraabarani 2002, Neerindri Amaiyaathu Ulagu 2003, and Neeli 2005. Her articles, serialized in the magazine Theranathi, encouraged many young woman writers to identify and articulate their silenced voices and were published as Viduthalai Ezhuthuthal (Writing the Freedom) 2004. With her fellow poet Kirushangini she has published an anthology of modern women's poems Paratthal Athan Suthanthiram and one collection of articles on feminism titled Ananku. She is the founder secretary of Ananku, a forum for feminist activities.
Najam Sethi, Lahore, is an eminent Pakistani journalist, editor, and news media personality and Editor-in-Chief of The Friday Times and The Daily Times. An aggressively independent journalist, Najam Sethi and his publications are often in trouble with Pakistani governments. He was imprisoned by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a case that evoked an international outcry that eventually pressured the government to release him.
P.A.Sebastian, Mumbai bio awaited
P.G.Rasool, Srinagar, has been writing in Urdu for the past fourteen years, in a weekly column on current affairs in Kashmir Uzma (Greater Kashmir) the Urdu weekly published from Srinagar. He has also authored a book titled Kashmir 1947 (Urdu). The book looks at the events of 1947 and the origins of the Kashmir issue. Rasool is widely respected for his probing and dispassionate analysis of events and political commentary. P G Rasool is a postgraduate in Mass Communication & Journalism from the University of Kashmir.
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Delhi, started his career as a journalist in June 1977 and has worked with Business India, BusinessWorld, The Telegraph , India Today and The Pioneer. And with Television Eighteen India Limited for almost six years. During this period he anchored a daily interview and discussion programme called "India Talks" on the CNBC television channel. He is currently Director of the School of Convergence (SoC), which combines the curricula of a journalism school, a film school and a management school. He has also directed a number of documentary films - Idiot Box or Window of Hope and University of Delhi: A Haven of Learning - being some of them. He has co-authored a book with Shankar Raghuraman entitled: "A Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand", published by Sage Publications India in March 2004.
Prasanna Vithanage, Srilanka, directed his first film Sisila Gini Gani (Ice on Fire) 1992 won nine OCIC (Sri Lanka) Awards including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress. His second feature Anantha Rathriya (Dark Night of the Soul), 1996 won a Jury's Special Mention at the First Pusan International Film festival and at the 1996 Sri Lanka Film Critics Forum Awards it won Most Outstanding Film, Best Director and Best Scriptwriter. Pawuru Walalu (Walls Within) 1997 won the Best Actress Award at the Singapore International Film Festival 1998. His feature Purahanda Kaluwara (Death on A Full Moon Day) 1997, won the Grand Prix at the Amiens Film Festival. Initially banned by the government of Sri Lanka, it has since become the most successful film in the half century long history of cinema in Sri Lanka. Prasanna has just completed his fifth film ' Ira Madiyama'.
Ravi Kumar, Pondicherry is a writer, essayist and translator, who started the critical magazines Nirapirikai (The Spectrum) and Dalit, which while dealing with the caste question, does not limit itself to dalit literature or dalit issues, but focuses on other writings/cultures. He is the editor of Bodhi, the Tamil dalit history quarterly. He also wrote the life of Malcolm X in a serialized form for Dalit Murasu (run by the Dalit Media Network) and the revived history of the so-called untouchable poet, Nandanar, which is carried in serialised form in Thai Mann (run by Dalit Panthers of India). In association with the journalist S.Anand, he has recently started the alternative publishing house, Navayana. He is a former President of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu.
Robin S Ngangom, Shillong, is a Manipuri English poet and a translator of Manipuri writing. He has published two volumes of poetry, and edited Anthology of Contemporary poetry from North East . His latest collection of poems is being published by Chandrabhaga Press. He currently teaches in Shillong
Sanjay Srivastava, Delhi, is a social anthropologist, currently on leave from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. His key publications include 'Constructing Post-colonial India. National Character and the Doon School' (1998), 'Asia. Cultural Politics in the Global World' (2001, co-author), 'Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes' (2004, contributing editor), and, 'An Education of the Passions. Sexuality, Consumption and Class in India' (In Press).
Sara Hossain, Dacca, is a lawyer practicing in the high court division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. She is actively involved with Ain o Salish Kendra [law and mediation centre], and the Bangladesh Legal Aid & Services Trust , a national legal services organisation. She earlier worked with Interights, and International Human Rights Law Centre, London. Her publications include Honour Crimes, Paradigms and Violence against Women (co-edited with Lynn Welchman), Zed Press, London 1995. She has acted in a number of cases involving the censorship of films, or banning of publications
Shohini Ghosh, Delhi, is Reader, Video and Television Production at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, (Central University) New Delhi. She has been Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, Cornell University, USA (1990-1996); Globalization-McArthur Fellow at the University of Chicago (2001), Fellow at the Gender, Sexuality and Law Research Group of the Law Department at Keele University, UK and is Visiting Professor at the Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture and Society , International School for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her current work is on issues of media cultures, censorship and sexuality.
Shudhabhrata Sengupta, Delhi is a media practitioner, artist and writer with the Raqs Media Collective and one of the co-initiators of the Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Shuddhabrata is member of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader.
Sudhir Pattnaik, Bhuvaneshwar, is Editor of Samadristi an Oriya fortnightly news magazine and is Chairman of Independent Media - an alternative media group consisting of filmmakers, writers and journalists who work for developing alternative media initiatives in Orissa.
Tenzin Tsundoe is a writer-activist born to a Tibetan refugee family, and after graduating from Chennai, he crossed the Himalayas on foot to enter Tibet, where he was arrested by the Chinese border police, and after three months in prison in Lhasa, was pushed back to India. He has been published in International PEN, The Little Magazine, Outlook, The Times of India, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times, The Economic Times, Tehelka, Mid-Day (Mumbai), Afternoon (Mumbai), The Daily Star (Bangladesh), and Today (Singapore). His literary skills won him the first-ever Outlook-Picador Award for Non-Fiction in 2001. Since 1999 Tsundue has worked with Friends of Tibet (India) in 1999 as its general secretary. In January 2002 he scaled the scaffolding to the 14th floor of the Oberoi Towers in Mumbai to unfurl a Tibetan national flag and a banner which read "Free Tibet" down the hotel's facade. China's Premier Zhu Rongji was inside the hotel addressing a conference of Indian business tycoons. In April 2005, he repeated a similar feat during the Bangalore visit of the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao.
Tarun Bhartiya, Shillong is an activist with the freedom project Shillong. A Hindi poet with published work in Samkalin Bhartiya Sahitya, Pahel, Hans, Akshar Parv, and the Sarai Reader. Tarun is also a filmmaker whose work in progress is called Tourist Information for Shillong (four parts done - fifth being thought about). He has worked for NDTV and Campkins Camera Centre (a camera shop). Currently Tarun Bhartiya is founding-member of alt-space, an open space for culture and politics in Shillong.
Tanvir Mokammel, Dacca is a filmmaker with several award winning documentaries and feature films to his credit. His features include Nadir Nam Modhumat (The River named Modhumati) 1995 which received three national awards and Chitra Nadir Pare (Quiet Flows the river Chitra) 1998 a feature film on the destiny of a Hindu family in East Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947. It received seven national awards including best film, best story, best script writing, best art direction and best director of the year. Lalsalu (A tree without roots) 2001 centers on the life of a Mullah who establishes a false shrine in a remote village in Bangladesh and received eight national awards including the best film, best script writing, best cinematography, best sound and best director of the year. His latest feature Lalon 2004 is based on the life and persona of the mystic song-composer Lalon Fakir.. His documentaries include Hooliya (Wanted), Smriti Ekattor (Remembrance), Achin Pakhi (The unknown bard) and Karnaphulir Kanna, (Teardrops Of Karnaphuli), a documentary on the plight of the indigenous people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a film that has been banned by the Government of Bangladesh. Tanvir Mokammel is a prolific writer who has taught film and film appreciation at the Viswa Sahitya Kendro and Standford University. He is the Director, Bangladesh Film Institute.
Vimukthi Jayasundara, Srilanka: As a 28-year-old Vimukthi became only the second filmmaker from Sri Lanka to compete for an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005. Jayasundara's film Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land) competed in the Un Certain Regard section and received the Caméra d'Or, Cannes's award for first-time filmmakers. Jayasundara worked in the advertising industry and wrote film reviews before studying at the Film and Television Institute of India from 1998 to 2001. Returning to Sri Lanka, he joined the Government Film Unit and made The Land of Silence, a black-and-white documentary about the victims of Sri Lanka's civil war. In 2001, he received a grant to continue his film studies in France at Le Fresnoy. As a student there Jayasundara made Empty for Love (2002), a short film that was selected for Cinéfondation, the student category at Cannes.
END OF MAIL
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Kavita Joshi
+91. 11. 26511337 (r-o) | 26518315 (studio)
kj.impulse at gmail.com (main) | k.jo at rediffmail.com (bk-up)
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