SSAFF brings meaningful and thought-provoking cinema from South Asia with a focus on social issues dealing with, among others, gender, sexuality, religion, nationalism, casteism, racism, neo-liberalism, and imperialism. 2015 is the tenth anniversary of SSAFF. We mark this important milestone by hosting a symposium on ‘The Politics of Filmmaking in South Asia’, in collaboration with the South Asia Center at the University of Washington. The symposium will be held on October 19th & 20th at the UW Seattle and Bothell campuses, respectively.
The objective of this symposium is to open a conversation on the politics of filmmaking on human rights violations in South Asia: what has changed over the past ten years and what kind of challenges persist as filmmakers document, often risking their lives, the region’s disregard towards its abysmal state of human rights records, which gets exacerbated by the region’s asymmetrical development.
The symposium is structured around two objectives. The first is to capitalize on the filmmaking talent that comes to Seattle each Fall for SSAFF. The second is to bridge the gap between the academia and community through scholarly presentations, and conversations and interviews with filmmakers. It aims to do so by providing a common platform to filmmakers, scholars, and members of the community to together explore how cinema interacts with the modern human rights movement, and the ways in which it can be used as a tool for resisting against human rights violations.
Key themes to be covered in the symposium:
- Secularism, the rise of the right wing, and minority persecution.
- Violence against women and the feminist movement.
- Queer politics and the modern anti-heteronormative movement.
- Neo-colonialism, the environment, and armed resistance.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE POLITICS OF FILMMAKING SCHEDULE
Monday, October 19: Thomson Hall (Room 317) University of Washington, Seattle
08:30 – 09:00 COFFEE AND LIGHT BREAKFAST
09:00 – 09.15 Opening Remarks: Alka Kurian
09:15 – 11:15 Film Screening: Red Ant Dream, Directed by Sanjay Kak
11:15 – 11:30 BREAK
11:30 – 12:30 Panel One: Minority Oppression
- Sanjay Kak: Folding Film into the Resistance: A Short and Personal History of the Political Documentary in India
- Deepti Misri: Return and Irreconciliation in Onir’s I Am (Megha)
- Bidisha Biswas: In Kashmir, They Disappear: Revisiting AFSPA through the Lens of Haider
12:30 – 01:00 Panel discussion
01:00 – 01:30 LUNCH
01:30 – 02:30 Film Screening: Dalit Women Fight, Directed by Thenmozhi Soundararajan
02:30 – 03:30 Panel Two: Caste Oppression
- Thenmozhi Soundararajan: Dalit Women’s Resistance
- Bindu Menon: The Spectacular and the Quotidian: Caste Violence in Fandry and Papiliobuddha
- Shoba Sharad Rajagopal: Thugs, Dacoits, and Politicians? Indigenous Communities in Indian Cinema Today
03:30 – 04:00 Panel Discussion
04:00 – 04:15 BREAK
04:15 – 05:15 Panel Three: Gender Violence
- Sangita Gopal: New Indian Cinema and the Woman Question
- Shreerekha Subramanian: Feminist Masculinism: Imagined Response to Violence Against Women in Pradeep Sarkar’s Hindi Film Mardaani
- Sonora Jha: The “Daughters” Beg to Differ: Feminist India’s Response to BBC Documentary India’s Daughter.
05:15 – 05:45 Panel Discussion
Tuesday, October 20: University of Washington, Bothell, North Creek Event Center
08:30 – 09:00 COFFEE AND LIGHT BREAKFAST
09:00 – 9:30 Film Screenings:
- The Nightingales of Pakistan, Directed by Fawzia Afzal Khan
9:30 – 11:00 Panel Four: Gender, Nation, Identity
- Hemal Trivedi, Mohammad Naqvi: Secularism, the Rise of the Right wing, and Minority Persecution
- Fawzia Afzal Khan: Feminist Mediations: The Sacred and the Secular in three Pakistani Female Singers
- Alka Kurian: Integrating Whose voice? Class and Nation in The Reluctant Fundamentalist
11:00 – 12:00 Panel Discussion
12:00 – 01:00 LUNCH
01:00 – 3:00 Work in Progress: Rakesh Sharma
3:00 – 3:15 BREAK
03:15 – 04:15 Film Screening: Silence in the Courts, Directed by Prasanna Vithanage
04:15 – 05:15 Panel Five: Human Rights, Censorship, and Nation
- Bruce Kochis: The Future of Human Rights
- Prasanna Vithanage: Many Faces of Censorship in an Ethno-Religiously Polarized Society
- Nadeem Uddin: Bhopal 84 – Denial, Resistance and the Continuous disaster 30 years on
05:15 – 05:45 Panel Discussion
05:45 Closing Remarks
Download: Politics of Filmmaking Symposium Program.pdf
