Documentary
Series from / on Tamilnadu
Organized by
MARUPAKKAM
in association with Panuval Book Shop,
Discovery Book Palace and Periyar Self Respect Media Department – Periyar
Thidal
Curated by Amudhan
R.P. : Program 01
13-19 March 2017
13 March: Panuval
Book Shop, Thiruvanmiyur
6:00 pm Bhopal – An Unpunished
Crime (Dir: Maga Tamizh Prabhakaran;
24 min; Tamil; News7 Tamil production)
24 min; Tamil; News7 Tamil production)
A film on Bhopal gas tragedy and people’s
(victims) fight for justice.
6:35
Unearthing the Treasure of Ariyalur (Dir:Vaishnavi Sundar; English; 25 min)
How would one travel time, traverse a chasm
spanning millions of years to stare into the past? In the little town of
Ariyalur, you can do the impossible. Standing in the midst of a mass grave of
prehistoric ocean life, one gets a glimpse of mother earth in her Cretaceous
prime and comes face to face with a physical incarnation of time and life of
the planet.
7:10Mask is the Face (Dir: RR Srinivasan; 60
min; Tamil with English subtitles)
Kulasekarnpattinam is an ancient harbour in south of
Tamilnadu,(INDIA). It is known for its century old folk festival, a unique, but
absolutely fascinating annual event, which draws many lakhs of simple rural
folk. It also held for 10 days in the month of October at the temple of the
local goddess Mutharamman. The festival demands of the rural people the novel
pledge of wearing masks, singing and dancing.This film travels and explores
through the folk festival and try to make this experience to a fiction like
narration.
14 March: Panuval
Book Shop, Thiruvanmiyur
6:00
pm Menses (Dir: Geeta Ilangovan; 38 min)
A
film on social and cultural taboo around menses, and various people’s take on
it.
7:00 Yaazhpaaanam Thedchanamoorthy (Dir : Amshan Kumar; 35 min)
This is a
Tamil documentary on the great Tavil Vidwan Yazhpanam Thedchanamoorthy. He was
lionised for his musical accomplishments by both his fans and carnatic
musicians. To this day they remember his great performances in India and Sri
Lanka. As an iconic figure he helped bridge the ties between the two countries
through soulful music.
The film had
been premiered in London, Toronto, Jaffna, Chennai, Paris and Sydney to rousing
reception from his fans. It won the National Award for the Best Art Documentary
in 2015.
7:45 Mercury in the Mist (Dir:Amudhan R.P.; 17
min)
Ex-workers of a thermometer factory owned and run by
Hindustan Lever Limited in Kodaikanal, a hill station in south India suffer
from mercury contamination. 30 persons have died so far due to various
diseases. The ex-workers of the factory continue their fight against the
multinational company which refuses to take the responsibility.
15 March:
Discovery Book Palace, KK Nagar
6:00pm Silent Hues
(Dir: R Rohini; 50 min)
Silent Hues', takes a look at six child actors from India. Moving through
conversations and silences, the film lines and colours the spoken and
unarticulated thoughts and emotions of the children who vary from a confident
star in the making to an unknowing infant. The mindset and ambitions of the
makers of these child actors, the fathers and mothers is unravelled through
interviews. 'Silent Hues' reveals the politics of child actors/ workers through
an unstated yet dense rendering of scenes that dissolve from one to the other.
7:00 Desired Melody (Dir: Prasanna Ramaswamy; 85
min)
The film follows musician Sanjay
Subrahmanyan to concerts and private practice moments. A very personal film, it attempts to engage with the experience of his music
and reflects through referential images of other classical arts like sculpture
and dance, travels through temple festivals where music is an inherent part.
The film has been screened at many
international festivals, including the International Filmfest Muenchen.
16 March:
Discovery Book Palace, KK Nagar
6:00 pm Nuclear
Hallucinations (Dir: Fathima Nizaruddin; 53 min)
Nuclear
Hallucinations is a film, which claims to be a documentary, and it is centred
around the anti-nuclear struggle against the kudankulam atomic power project in
south India.
7:00 Ramaiyaavin Kudisai (Dir: Bharathi
Krishnakumar; 60 min)
A film on Keelvenmani
massacre (1968) in which 44 people, mostly women and children, belonging to Dalit
agricultural families, were burnt alive by landlords and their henchmen in
(united) Tanjore district, Tamilnadu.
17 March : Periyar
Thidal, Veperi
6:00 Ma Aranganathanum Konjam
Kavithaihalum (Dir: Ravi Subramaniyan; 45 min)
A film on Ma Aranaganathan, a
Tamil writer.
7:00 Yaadhum (Dir: Kombai S
Anwar; 56 min)
The film ‘Yaadhum’ (All) is a celebration of diversity within the Tamil,
Indian and Islamic world. It throws the spotlight on the less spoken Tamil
Muslim community, its history and identity, and how Islam took early roots in
the Tamil country, even as it was spreading across the Arabian Peninsula and
beyond.
The story is told through Kombai S. Anwar’s perspective, himself being a
Tamil Muslim. It covers archaeological excavations, inscriptions, old mosques
built in the architectural traditions of Tamil Nadu & Kerala, other
existing traditions, Sufism, literature and interviews with well-known
historians. The film showcases more than a millennium old harmonious
co-existence of Islam in Tamizhagam.
18 March : Periyar
Thidal, Veperi
5:30 pm Veli (Dir:
Sashikanth; 53 min)
A poetic free flowing documentary along with the river
Kaveri, which explores the myriad possible relations possible between a self-conscious
'subject' and an active 'object', in this case the river itself. It is finally
an 'impossible' love story between the sound and the image.
7:00 Where do the Children Play (Dir: Bala
Kailasam; 65 min)
The title of the film is from Cat Stevens song by the same
name. The film is an expression of solidarity
by the filmmaker with the survivors of the Bhopal gas victims in their on-going
struggle for justice
In
2008, survivors of one of the world’s largest industrial disaster undertook a
Padayatra from Bhopal to Delhi, to ask their Government to intercede on their
behalf with Union Carbide and DOW petrochemicals, so that justice was done.
This was a peaceful protest march, and the documentary records this
excruciating journey of over 800 Kms as a fellow participant in solidarity with
the Satyagrahis.
The
film is a celebration of the resilience and will to live of our fellow
citizens, against impossible odds. .. With the walk, Kailasam also records the over 30
year movement for
justice.
justice.
19 March: Periyar
Thidal, Veperi
2:00 Thangam (Dir: Ilaria Freccia & Swarnavel; 58 min)
Thangam documents the life and
times of a thirteen-year-old girl Thangam of Valuthoor
village, in Tirunelveli, who is tomboyish
and unwilling to toe the line like her peers in
the village who roll bidis for a living. Through re-enactments
of events from her life, this
film follows Thangam as she tries to escape her mundane life
and chases her dreams.
3:15 SheWrite (Dir:Anjali Monteiro and KP
Jayasankar; 54 min)
SheWrite weaves
together the narratives and work of four Tamil women poets.
Salma negotiates
subversive expression within the tightly circumscribed space allotted to a
woman in the small town of Thuvarankurichi. She is able to defy and transcend
family proscriptions on writing to become a significant voice questioning
patriarchal mores in a powerful yet gentle way.
For Kuttirevathi, a
Siddha doctor and researcher based in Chennai, solitude is a crucial creative
space from where her work resonates, speaking not just for herself but also for
other women who are struggling to find a voice. Her anthology entitled Breasts
(2003) became a controversial work that elicited hate mail, obscene calls and
threats.
The fact that a
number of women poets are resisting patriarchy and exploring themes such as
desire and sexuality in their creative work been virulently opposed by some
Tamil film lyricists, who have gone on record with threats of death and
violence. In various ways, the dominant culture has tried to threaten and
rubbish the poets and their work. This has been resisted by a group of poets
and other artists who have formed an organization called Anangu (Woman), which
is attempting to expand the subversive creative spaces available to women
writers and poets, across Tamil Nadu.
Malathy Maitri, who
lives in Pondicherry, has been a Dalit and Marxist activist. She is a founder
member of Anangu and militantly opposes the attacks on women writers. Her poems
attempt to explore and express feminine power.
Sukirtharani, a
schoolteacher in Lalapet, writes of desire and longing, celebrating the body in
a way that affirms feminine empowerment and a rejection of male-centred
discourse. The film traverses these diverse modes of resistance, through images
and sounds that evoke the universal experiences of pain, anger, desire and
transcendence.
4:30 Mullaitheevu Saga (Dir: Someetharan; 47
min)
A battered face believes that Kannaki, legendary heroine
of the ancient Tamil literary work Silapathikaram, will one day come, fight for
justice. This is recounted through a Koothu played in the historic land before
the war in Sri Lanka. "Mullaitivu saga" an episode of planned
massacre of the suppressed people while most of the human rights machinery
remained a silent witness.
5:30 Chennai the Split City
(Dir:Venkatesh Chakravarthy; 70 min)
Initially,
this film started on a personal note propelled by the desire to document my
lived experience of the city of Chennai.
Later after shooting a bit of the Besant Nagar episode, we happened to
get sufficient funds to make an alternative dissemination project for IDPAD
& INTACH as M.S.S. Pandian (Social
Scientist) and A. Srivatsan (Architect) wished to document their research on
the city along with mine.
The
main thread then became how with globalization the city began to be envisioned
as an ideal destination for the international business traveller as against the
earlier envisioning of it as an ideal destination for the international
tourist. Caught as it was in the process
of unprecedented change and development we wished to document the objectives of
this move and the processes that marginalized the North Chennai while
privileging South Chennai. Hence the
title, Chennai – The Split City.
7:00 Kakoos (Dir:Divyabarathi; 104 min)
A film about man hole workers in Tamilnadu, the discrimination they face from the
society and the governments, the health hazard, the danger and death they encounter
to the poisonous gas are forced to consume from the man-holes, and the uncertain
future that is imposed on their families and their children.
Ph: 9940642044; 9710904481; 9444025348
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