THAMIZH STUDIO & KONANGAL
Documentaries
of Anand Patwardhan
2nd
Aug; 5.45pm; Perks Mini theater
Anand Patwardan is the
recipient of Thamizh Studio‘s 2014 Lenin Award
which will be presented to him on 15 th August 2014 at Chennai.
1. A Narmada
Diary
(1995,
Colour, 57 mins)
The Sardar Sarover Dam in western
India, lynch-pin of a mammoth development project on the river Narmada’s banks,
has been criticized as uneconomical and unjust. It will benefit urban India at
a cost borne by the rural poor. When completed, the dam will drown 37,000
hectares of fertile land, displace over 200,000 adivasis – the area’s
indigenous people -, and cost up to 400 billion rupees. Ecological, cultural,
and human costs – as often is the case with “mega” projects – have never been
estimated. A NARMADA DIARY introduces the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the Save
Narmada Movement) which has spearheaded the agitation against the dam. As
government resettlement programs prove inadequate, the Narmada Bachao Andolan
has emerged as one of the most dynamic struggles in India today.
With non-violent protests and a determination
to drown rather than to leave their homes and land, the people of the Narmada
valley have become symbols of a global struggle against unjust development.
But the dam building continues. If
it’s height is not checked, the entire adivasi region of the Narmada will
drown. In the name of progress, a relatively self-sufficient, egalitarian and
environmentally sound economy and culture will be destroyed and a proud people
reduced to the status of refugees and slum dwellers.
2. Fishing:
In the Sea of Greed
(1998, 42
minutes)
Traditional fishing communities
around the world are under threat of mass displacement by the industrial
fishing practices of gigantic factory ships. Private capital, with the aid of
international lending agencies, have embarked on a mindless offensive to catch
fish in quantities unheard of until now.
This frightening abuse of the seas
has been actively promoted by governments in the developing world, as
territorial waters are handed over to transnational corporations to meet debt
obligations. Further, agencies like the World Bank have promoted aquaculture
prawn farming as a foreign currency earner in the Third World.
The primary victims are
poverty-stricken rice growers and fishing communities. Salination of ground
water causes a scarcity of fresh drinking water as waste from prawn farms are
emptied into nearby rivers and other fresh water bodies. Within years, large
stretches of land are abandoned as unfit for agriculture.
Fishing in the Sea of Greed documents
the response of one fishing community in India to the “rape and run” industries
that have begun to dominate their livelihood and decimate their environment.
Under the leadership of the National Fishworkers Forum and the World Forum of
Fishworkers and Fish Harvesters, workers are fighting not only for their jobs,
but for the survival of the world’s coastal communities and ecosystems.
Anand
Patwardhan
Anand Patwardhan has been making
political documentaries for nearly three decades pursuing diverse and
controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in
India. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television
channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Patwardhan who
successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court.
Patwardhan received a B.A. in
English Literature from Bombay University in 1970, won a scholarship to get
another B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1972 and earned a
Master’s degree in Communications from McGill University in 1982. Patwardhan
has been an activist ever since he was a student — having participated in the
anti-Vietnam War movement; being a volunteer in Caesar Chavez’s United Farm
Worker’s Union; working in Kishore Bharati, a rural development and education
project in central India; and participating in the Bihar anti-corruption
movement in 1974-75 and in the civil liberties and democratic rights movement
during and after the 1975-77 Emergency. Since then he has been active in
movements for housing rights of the urban poor, for communal harmony and
participated in movements against unjust, unsustainable development, miltarism
and nuclear nationalism.
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