[Reader-list] Invitation for screening 'There was a Queen'

[Santhosh Kumar]

*'There was a queen' in Madurai International Film Festival*

'There was a queen, the documentary film on woman, conflict and peace in
Kashmir will be screened in 10th Madurai International Film Festival on
Decemeber 5th afternoon in Tamilnadu Theological Seminary auditorium. The
film is directed by Ms. Kavita Pai and Hansa
Thapliyal and shot by an all women crew.Madurai International Film Festval
will be held from 3rd to 8th of Decemberin various venues including colleges
and villages in and around Madurai.

This film has so farparticipated in MIFF-2008, ViBGYOR-2008, Kolkatta Film
Festival-2008 and it will be screened in Tri-Continental Film Festival-2009.

*Synopsis*

"Yi As Akh Padshah Bai"

(There was a Queen…)


India / Kashmiri, Hindustani, English with English subtitles / 105 minutes /
Video / 2007



 "Give us guns and we'll play our role!" - These are not the words of a
hardened criminal; these are the words of a teenaged girl in Kashmir less
than a week after her sister was buried.



Farha's sister Shahnaza, and her friend, Ulfat, victims of 'crossfire' would
have been adult women today - they were barely seventeen when they died, as
old as the *tehreek*, the movement, that exploded into existence in 1989,
shattering forever the peace of the Valley, and 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, peace loving Kashmiris and
terrorist Kashmiris, misguided innocents and fundamentalist separatists,
victims and aggressors. Over and above these is the image that erases all
differences – the Kashmiri as terrorist.



The film discusses how women's engagement with everyday violence has led
them to think of issues of security, peace, conflict management and
transformation in the unique situation of conflict in the area. It is also
an exploration of the relationship between the construction of identity of
the community/nation and women's identity and the need for women to be aware
of how and by whom these identity constructs are forged which are usually
not favorable to women's autonomy in the particular culture and nation.



When the directors set out to make a film, they felt strange to speak to
women, only women, ignoring the other half. So they 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 who had lost his son and then realized he
was a militant, a fourth whose brother was killed in crossfire – they spoke
to men and realized that while every story had the power to shock and move,
the women's stories were compelling in their honesty, in their rage, in
their helplessness, in their grief, in their contempt, in their fierce
refusal to forget, in their determination to survive, to nurture.



It is through these women – proud, strong, with an undying zest for life –
that the film examines what peace means and how it can come about in
Kashmir.


(For DVD copy of the film contact:www.othermediacommunications.com)