[Reader-list] Bengaluru Talkies: [Screening] Let's Meet at Baba Ratan's Fai

[Kabir Khan]

Bengaluru Talkies: [Screening] Let's Meet at Baba Ratan's Fair
<https://www.facebook.com/events/832273813479815/?ref=22>

Paradigm Shift <https://www.facebook.com/paradigmshiftvegan> is excited and
delighted to invite you for the screening of 'Let's Meet At Baba Ratan's
Fair' (Milange Babey Ratan De Mele Te) by Ajay Bhardwaj
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=605136576> on 27th September.

About the movie: Borders spring up from nowhere; new nations are born of a
violent rupture and unprecedented blood-letting, uprooting millions of
people; and, a centuries-old composite culture is silenced forever. Or so
it would seem…

On the eve of the British leaving the subcontinent in 1947, Punjab was
partitioned along religious lines. Thus was created a Muslim majority state
of Punjab (west) in Pakistan and a Hindu /Sikh majority state of Punjab
(east) in India. For the people of Punjab, it created a paradoxical
situation they had never experienced before: the self became the Other. The
universe of a shared way of life – Punjabiyat — was marginalised. It was
replaced by perceptions of contending identities through the two nation
states. For most of us this has been the narrative of Punjab– once known as
the land of five waters, now a cultural region spanning the border between
Pakistan and India.

However, the idea of Punjabiyat has not been totally erased. In ways seen
and unseen, it continues to inhabit the universe of the average Punjabi’s
everyday life, language, culture, memories and consciousness. This is the
universe that the film stumbles upon in the countryside of east Punjab, in
India. Following the patters of lived life, it moves fluidly and
eclectically across time, mapping organic cultural continuities at the
local levels. It is a universe which reaffirms the fact that cultures
cannot be erased so very easily.

This is a universe marked by a rich tradition of cultural co-existence and
exchange, where the boundaries between the apparently monolithic religious
identities of ‘Hindu’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘Sikh’ are blurred and subverted in the
most imaginative ways.

Moreover, one finds in this universe, mythologies from the past sanctifying
such transgressions and reproducing themselves in the present;
iconographies of Hindu gods and Sikh gurus share space with lovers, singers
and wrestlers, creating a rich convergence of the sacred, the profane, and
the subversive. Nothing represents this more than the Qissa Heer, a love
balled exemplifying a unique Punjabi spirituality identified with love,
whose multiple manifestations richly texture this landscape.

Yet, there are absences to deal with. Strewn across this cultural terrain
are haunting memories which have become second skin —of violence of 1947;
of separation from one’s land; of childhood friends lost forever; of
anonymous graves that lie abandoned in village fields.

Accompanying this caravan of seekers and lovers are the ascetic non
believers in whom a yearning for love and harmony turns into poetry against
war and aggression. Such is the land of Punjab where miracles never cease
to capture the imagination.

About the film-maker: Ajay Bhardwaj is a documentary filmmaker based in
Delhi, currently pursuing a PhD in Asian Studies from the University of
British Columbia in Vancouver. He holds a Master’s degree in Political
Studies (from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi) and in Mass
Communications (from the AJK Mass Communications Research Centre, Jamia
Millia Islamia, Delhi).

Having worked in the thick of media for over two decades, Bhardwaj has been
making documentaries since 1997, starting with Ek Minute Ka Maun ( A Minute
of Silence), on the martyrdom of former President of the Jawaharlal Nehru
University’s student union Chandrashekhar Prasad, which exposed some of the
basic fault-lines of Indian politics and society.

Since 2002, while working on different themes, he has had a constant
engagement with the north-western state of Punjab, interrogating all its
mainstream narratives of culture, politics, history and identity. These
explorations have emerged in a documentary trilogy: Milange Babey Ratan De
Mele Te (Let’s Meet at Baba Ratan’s Fair); Rabba Hun Kee Kariye (Thus
Departed our neighbours) and Kitte Mil Ve Mahi (Where the Twain Shall
Meet). His documentaries have been screened at international film
festivals, academic conferences, and community and activist events.

Date: 27th September, 2014
Time: 6:30pm
Venue: Paradigm Shift, 4th Floor, 8, 80 Feet Road, Koramanagala- 4th Block,
Near Sony Signal, Bangalore.

For more details you can write to: paradigmshiftbangalore at gmail.com, or
call at +919663427315


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Regards

कबीर/کبیر

Phone:00-91-96-63-427-315

email: kabirkhan1989 at gmail.com

email: maleccha at live.com

Follow me on:
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<http://maleccha.wordpress.com/> & Twitter <https://twitter.com/Maleccha>
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