NEW ZEALAND-INDIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE (NZIRI) MASSEY CHAPTER

Palmerston North City

Cowboys in IndiaIndia, 2009, 76 min, Dir-Simon ChambersRollicking through Orissa on the trail of Vedanta mining operations.

Dharavi, Slum for SaleIndia, 2010, 79 min, Dir-Lutz KonermannStruggle between residents and developers in the world’s largest slum.

I Was Worth 50 SheepAfghanistan, 2010, 72 min, Dir-Nima SarvestaniWomen as property in Afghanistan.

Journey to YarsaNepal, 2011, 55 min,Dir-Dipendra BhandariFollowing a Rukum family in search of yarsagumba gold.Winner of the Tareque Masud Best Debut Film Award at FSA ’11

The Truth That Wasn’t ThereSri Lanka/UK, 2011, 84 min, Dir-Guy GunaratneThe first filmmakers to enter the Sri Lankan North after the fighting stopped. Winner of the Second Best Film Award at FSA ’11

Nargis: When Time Stopped BreathingBurma, 2010, 90 min,Dir-Kyaw Kyaw Oo, Maung Myint AungShot in secret, the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.Winner of the Special Jury Mention Award at FSA ’11

Nero’s GuestsIndia, 2009, 56 min,Dir-Deepa BhatiaJournalist P Sainath’s view of India’s agrarian crisis.

Partners in CrimeIndia, 2011, 94 min,Dir-Paromita Vohra ‘Munni badnam hui’ and the matter of copyright.

Saving DolmaNepal, 2010, 62 min, Dir-Kesang TsetenThe case of an accused female migrant in the Gulf.

The Search for JusticePakistan, 2011, 28 min, Dir-Tehmina AhmedThe state of labour laws and courts in Pakistan.

Tres Tristes Tigres (Three Sad Tigers)Bangladesh, 2010, 15 min,Dir-David MunozThree Bangladeshi migrant labourers get duped.

KeroseneSri Lanka, 2011, 16 min,Dir-Kannan ArunasalamAdapting to wartime scarcities in Jaffna.

Southasia and the WorldFilm Southasia has selected 12 exceptional nonfiction productions of the last two years to create the Travelling Film Southasia 2012 (TFSA ’12) package. The films have been selected from the 36 documentaries screened in the competitive section of Film Southasia 2011, held in Kathmandu. The 12 films, each magnifying pressing Southasian matters and made between 2009-2011, were selected in consultation with FSA ’11’s three-member jury, chaired by veteran photographer and curator Satish Sharma.

The TFSA tradition started with the first Film Southasia festival held in Kathmandu in September 1997. Since then, following each biennial ‘mother festival’, about a dozen films have been selected to tour regionally and globally. To date, FSA has organised a total of seven TFSAs, each travelling to an average of 50 venues worldwide. As with the past TFSAs, we are confident that the high quality of films selected this time will help further consolidate the audience as well as the market for Southasian nonfiction films.

TFSA ’12 encapsulates a flavour of the Subcontinent with films from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Tibet Autonomous Region; covering a wide range of subjects from piracy/copyright issues to India’s agrarian crises and labor migrants to natural disasters. Included are three of the award winners at FSA ’11 as well as other films selected to showcase the variety, treatment and intensity that marks the world of Southasian documentaries.

TWELVE OUTSTANDING DOCUMENTARIES FROM SOUTHASIA

Cowboys in IndiaIndia, 2009, 76 min, Director - Simon Chambers

A sly subversion of a well-trodden story, Cowboys in India sets up the viewer to believe that we’re going to learn about the evils perpetrated by the London-based mining company Vedanta Resources in rural India. Long before the nowfamiliar mix of pollution, land-grabbing, false promises and thuggish ‘bodyguards’ hit the UK headlines, filmmaker Simon Chambers had relocated to Orissa for several years to try to understand the realities of development in the ‘third world’, but with a lot more on his mind than a simple exposé.The real narrative in this funny and clever film leaks out in dribs and drabs, and concerns Satya (the ‘organiser’) and Doya (the driver) and their complicated relationship with Simon. Playing the very model of the modern British documentarian, Simon confounds all expectations and subtly questions the conventions of the documentary genre. In the end, the threats are more immediate, and more serious, than anyone would have guessed.

Dharavi, Slum for SaleIndia, 2010, 79 min, Director - Lutz Konermann

The elephant has awoken. Bombay, India’s gateway to the West, has reinvented itself – and emerged as Mumbai, a modern, self-confident commercial metropolis. A magnet for the hopes of the rich and poor. But with thousands of migrants pouring in every day, half of its almost 20 million inhabitants are forced to live in slums, between the cracks of the official city. The biggest of these slums is called Dharavi. Ten years ago, US-trained architect Mukesh Mehta came back to India to usher in a new turn in Mumbai’s slum-rehabilitation policies. His formula is public-private partnership. Billions of dollars could be made – if the responsibility for a radical makeover of Dharavi were to be put into the hands of private investors. The government has been persuaded by Mehta’s vision and has appointed him as the consultant for the Dharavi Redevelopment Project. While thousands of families living and working in the slum are facing the threat of being evicted, Dharavi is becoming a test case. Not only for Mumbai or India, but for the future of the underprivileged of the entire world.

I Was Worth 50 SheepAfghanistan, 2010, 72 min, Director - Nima Sarvestani

At just 10 years old, Sabere was sold as a bride to a 55 year old member of the Taliban. Having endured six years of marital abuse, Sabere finally manages to escape and finds refuge at a women’s shelter. Emboldened by the injustice she has had to bear, Sabere seeks to divorce her husband. As Sabere’s situation begins to slowly improve it becomes apparent that her younger sister, who has already been promised to an older man for 50 sheep, will be forced to suffer the same fate. Filmed over the period of two years, the film provides an intimate and moving account of the plight of a poverty stricken family’s struggle for survival in present-day Afghanistan.

Journey to YarsaNepal, 2011, 55 min, Director - Dipendra Bhandari • Winner of the Tareque Masud Best Debut Film Award at FSA ’11

The film tells the story of a family from Rukum joining the harsh expedition to collect yarsagumba in the high Himal.

The Truth That Wasn’t ThereSri Lanka/UK, 2011, 84 min, Director - Guy Gunaratne • Winner of the Second Best Film Award at FSA ’11

In 2009, three student journalists crossed the frontlines in the wake of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the only independent journalists to have done so. They witnessed the trail of destruction and documented everything they saw on 30 hours of tape and over 4000 photographs. Having received unprecedented military-guided access to civilian IDP Camps and the final battlegrounds of the Tamil Tigers, this is the story of what they found.

Nargis: When Time Stopped BreathingBurma, 2010, 90 min, Directors - Kyaw Kyaw Oo & Maung Myint Aung • Winner of the Special Jury Mention Award at FSA ’11

In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis raged for hours in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwaddy Delta, killing 140,000 people. We felt compelled to do something. Seven days after the storm, we made our way to villages that had been utterly devastated, and met people who had lost everything to the cyclone. We recorded scenes that touched us to the core such as rain-drenched survivors searching for wood and nails in the mud to build a roof over their heads. Life was going on, somehow, in the most fragile of settings and yet it felt as if time stood still. We moved through a world that appeared surreal, where life and death seemed to coexist and survivors talked about the dead as if they were still with them. Our images reflect our own feelings as much as those of the people we met; we have carefully woven these emotions into an intimate and poetic film that conveys what it means when a natural disaster like Nargis changes forever the lives of so many.

Nero’s GuestsIndia, 2009, 56 min, Director - Deepa Bhatia

Nearly 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years. But the mainstream media hardly covers this. Nero’s Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the rural-affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper, P Sainath. Through sustained coverage of the farm crisis, Sainath and his colleagues created the national agenda, compelling a government in denial to take notice and act. Through his writings and lectures, Sainath makes us confront the India we do not want to see, and provokes us to think about who ‘Nero’s guests’ are in today’s world.

Partners in CrimeIndia, 2011, 94 min, Director - Paromita Vohra

Is piracy organised crime or class struggle? Are alternative artists who want to hold rights over their art and go it alone in the market, visionaries or nutcases? Is the fine line between plagiarism and inspiration a cop-out or a whole other way of looking at the fluid nature of authorship? Who owns a song – the person who made it or the person who paid for it? When more than three fourths of those with an Internet connection download all sorts of material for free, are they living out a brand new cultural freedom – or are they criminals? Full of wicked irony, great music and thorny questions Partners in Crime explores the grey horizons of copyright and culture during times when technology is changing the contours of the market.

Saving DolmaNepal, 2010, 62 min, Director - Kesang Tseten

The film follows the story of Dolma, a Nepali maid sentenced to death for allegedly killing a fellow Filipino domestic worker in Kuwait. As the movie searches for truth in the event, it provides a rare glimpse into the fractured lives of ill-prepared women migrant workers in the Gulf States.

The Search for JusticePakistan, 2011, 28 min, Director - Tehmina Ahmed

The documentary investigates the state of labour laws and courts in Pakistan, exposing flaws in the system and recommending possible solutions.

Tres Tristes Tigres (Three Sad Tigers)Bangladesh, 2010, 15 min, Director - David Munoz

This film tells the story of three men from the rural village of Rajbari, Bangladesh, who travelled to Dubai to escape poverty. But leaving behind their homes and families, submitting themselves to the mercy of middlemen and employers in a distant country, they also face the other side of this hope – suffering. This movie tries to highlight the plight of tens of thousands of such migrant labourers.

KeroseneSri Lanka, 2011, 16 min, Director - Kannan Arunasalam

During its war with the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan government imposed embargoes on the North and East. Things like fuel, medicines, food items and even newsprint came under the ban. The Tamil heartland of Jaffna was particularly affected. The embargo reached its height in the 1990s. Jaffna’s taxi drivers and newspaper men had to adapt to scarcity and hardship, and face violence close up.