[Reader-list] Fwd: screening of There was a Queen in MIFF

[Santhosh Kumar]

 <http://miffindia.in/ScreeningSchedule.aspx>

Screening in 10th Mumbai International Film Festival


*Yi As Akh Padshah Bai*  There was a Queen


Directed by Kavita Pai and Hansa Thapliyal

105 minutes/ English Subtitled

Competition section: Godrej Theatre - 4th February-Evening

8-00 to 9-30 pm

http://miffindia.in/ScreeningSchedule.aspx



Crew  (All Women Crew)

Directed by Kavita Pai / Hansa Thapliyal

Camera: Ranu Ghosh

Sound:   Gissy Michael

Editing:  Gouri Patwardhan



Music:    Manish J. Tipu

Executive Producer: E. Deenadayalan



Synopsis

"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.



When we set out to make a film on peace initiatives by women in conflict,
the question uppermost in our minds was, are women in Kashmir not Kashmiri,
do they really want peace? What kind of peace? And what about the men, don't
they want peace too, aren't they human? If both men and women want peace,
then what is the conflict about? Can 'peace' still the turmoil at the heart
of every Kashmiri? 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 who had lost his
son and then realized he was a militant, a fourth whose brother was killed
in crossfire – we 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 we examine what peace means and how it can come about in Kashmir.