Dastavezi is an international peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal, which seeks to reposition film as a central mode of knowing and thinking about South Asia. It is the first peer-reviewed journal connecting scholarly research from and about South Asia with filmic practices. Dastavezi welcomes submissions that connect academic texts and audio-visual material in creative ways to make a conceptual or empirical contribution to scholarship on South Asia. Contributions can either address existing discussions in new ways through audio-visual productions or introduce new themes that have thus far been overlooked in the field of South Asian studies, and which may be better addressed through an audio-visual approach. Submit your films and essays to: dastavezi@gmail.com
A Visual-Ethnographic Exploration of Home under a Flyover in Kolkata: Rethinking “Homelessness” and Limited Social Reproduction
Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata have been facing an acute crisis of housing. Massive informalization of the workforce on one hand and rising rent on the other, as landlords continue to profiteer from the lack of subsidized housing, has resulted in a manifold rise in the population of pavement dwellers and unhoused people who are more likely to settle informally. The centralized policies to house the unhoused have so far proven inadequate, often criminalizing the latter. This visual-ethnographic essay emphasizes the need to denaturalize and problematize “homelessness.” Aided with in-depth interviews conducted with unhoused dwellers residing under a flyover in Kolkata, I particularly depend on my interlocutors’ conceptualization of home and on photographs taken in the field to theorize how home as a site of social reproduction becomes crucial in the lives of the unhoused. Engaging with scholarship on embeddedness and placemaking, I explore the reconfigured meanings of housing as a ground for limited social reproduction, placed amid contested spheres of economic production and social reproduction.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sukanya Maity http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Photography and Cinema in Colonial India: Confronting the Other (and the I) through Image
This essay undertakes an analysis of two modern image-making practices– photography and cinema–and attempts to link them to the nascent formation of empire in India. Both photography and the moving image are here situated against a backdrop of 19th and early 20th century anthropological thought, a paradigm which in retrospect was integral to the institutional formation of these disciplines. An underlying assumption is that image-making and image-producing were not peripheral to the colonial enterprise of domination and control but were rather constitutive of it. By way of conclusion, I attempt to establish a link between vision-based practices and the spectral figure of a unified Europe which was itself an idealized construction.
Copyright (c) 2025 Vedant Srinivas http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
On the Death of the Kabul Tabla Player Javed Hussain Mahmoud
This article examines the death of the Kabul-born tabla player Javed Hussain Mahmoud (1972–2024) as a lens through which to explore the fragile conditions of musical memory in the Afghan diaspora. Drawing on my long-standing engagement with Afghan musicians and on audiovisual, ethnographic, and archival materials, the text situates Javed’s biography within the larger history of Kabul’s hereditary musician community in the Kucheh Kharabat. Once central to shaping Afghanistan’s musical modernity, this community experienced displacement, marginalization, and the near-eradication of its artistic infrastructure after decades of political violence. Javed’s life—rooted in a lineage of masters yet marked by exile, ill health, and isolation—embodies this broader rupture. By weaving personal recollections, field notes, and analyses of online media traces, the text explores the tensions between lived memory, inherited artistic lineages, and algorithmically mediated forms of remembrance. It argues that the narratives articulated by musicians from the Kucheh Kharabat—insisting on their foundational role in creating Afghanistan’s modern art-music tradition—remain insufficiently recognized within dominant public discourses, both in Afghanistan and in diaspora contexts. This text is thus as much an act of remembrance as it is a methodological reflection on the media conditions under which such remembrance now takes place.
Copyright (c) 2025 Markus Schlaffke http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Musahar Toli or Rukanpura: an Intersection of Caste and Gentrification
This essay explores the intersection of caste, space, and gentrification in the urban transformation of Musahar Toli, a neighborhood in Patna, India. It examines how the state’s provision of permanent housing in the 1990s reshaped Musahar Toli from a stigmatized settlement on the city’s outskirts to an increasingly urbanized area coveted by Patna’s middle-class residents. As wealthier, predominantly upper-caste inhabitants have moved in, the neighborhood has undergone both demographic and cultural shifts, erasing its historical association with the Dalit Musahar caste. This rebranding of Musahar Toli as Rukanpura reflects not just gentrification but the persistence of caste hierarchies, where symbolic capital is generated by distancing oneself from “polluting” caste identities. Despite urbanization, older residents express a lingering sense of exclusion, reinforced by inadequate amenities and discriminatory policing. These dynamics underscore how belonging and exclusion are produced through caste. This essay highlights the need to understand gentrification in Indian cities as a process entangled with caste and symbolic erasure, challenging simplistic readings of urban transformation and raising questions about the inclusivity of urban belonging for marginalized communities.
Copyright (c) 2025 Pranjal http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Drawn to Change: Image-Text Interplay in Indian Graphic Journalism
This article introduces Indian graphic journalism by exploring the general dynamics of the interplay of text and sequential visual narrative within this medium. A close reading of a selected work—a graphic feature on the suicide of the Dalit student Rohith Vemula in 2016, published on the Indian news platform The Quint—shows that the genre's success is driven largely by three key factors: the accessibility of images, their captivating nature, and their ability to convey additional layers of meaning. An overview of the current landscape of Indian graphic journalism will contextualize the findings, emphasizing the diversity of genre within the format. The article demonstrates that graphic journalism spans various genres with reportage, feature stories, and opinion pieces standing out as the most prominent within the Indian context. Across these genres, the inherent subjectivity of the drawn image is employed deliberately to challenge dominant narratives and bring marginalized voices to the forefront, giving rise to diverse forms of “visual activism” and creating valuable archives of protest and social commentary.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ira Sarma http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Documentary Filmmaking: Notes on Survey City and the Need for Films that Concern Mass Social Movements
This article encapsulates a history of social justice filmmaking in India or South Asia more broadly with regard to what is being heralded as the Indian documentary wave since 2021-till date. It asks what role funding institutions and grant-making bodies play who tend to cater to their audiences more than the instincts of justice that tend to motivate filmmakers who pursue stories about underrepresented communities or social justice. The article complicates the discussion on the process of making social justice films, and delves into the complexity of form and content vs. addressing social issues, as well as the sociological aspects of a non-fiction film and its production.
Copyright (c) 2024 Tarini Manchanda http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Pandharpur Wari: Pilgrim Sojourn in the City of Pune
The Pandharpur wari is an iconic annual pilgrimage in Maharashtra that starts from the towns of Alandi and Dehu. It has a rich tradition dating back to the thirteenth century. The wari (Marathi term for pilgrimage, also associated with the specific pilgrimage to the temple town of Pandharpur) involves hundreds of thousands of devotees known as varkaris walking for 21 days through villages and cities, traveling around 250 kilometers by foot to meet their beloved deity Vitthal at his temple in Pandharpur. The pilgrimage, passing through the city of Pune, is a significant event, because it transforms the city’s atmosphere into one of devout reverence and collective celebration for three days. Varkaris carry with them padukas, impressions of the feet of saintly poets of Maharashtra, to meet Vitthal. The poet–god relationship, central to the wari, underscores a devotional ethos that is inclusive and accessible to the common person, reinforcing the ideals of mutual respect and coexistence. In an era marked by political fragmentation, the Pandharpur wari stands as an example of hope, enacting how cultural and spiritual practices can bridge divides and cultivate a sense of collective identity and solidarity. Thus, the wari is more than a pilgrimage; it is a living tradition that fosters unity and love and is a testament to enduring faith and communal harmony. This audiovisual essay offers an immersive experience of the wari in Pune.
Copyright (c) 2024 Suchetana Banerjee http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Bleeding Heart: Arshi I. Ahmadzai's Exploration of Feminine Identity
This article showcases the complex intersection of feminine identity and cultural heritage through the work of artist Arshi I. Ahmadzai. Drawing on Persian and Mughal miniature traditions together with the abstract aesthetics of the Bauhaus, Ahmadzai’s recent series explore how women experience emotional and physical transformations. Central to her work is the recurring symbol of the bleeding heart, which embodies pain, vulnerability, and a deep emotional connection. Through her use of fabric, natural pigments, and Urdu writing—often intentionally unreadable—Ahmadzai blends poetry with artistic expression, creating a unique visual language that resonates across cultural boundaries. Her experiences in India, Kabul, and Weimar (Germany) profoundly shape her art practice. This article captures how Ahmadzai’s art not only reflects her personal struggles with patriarchal norms but also offers a universal commentary on the sanctity of the feminine experience, culminating in a body of work that is both intimate and powerful. Her art engages deeply with Sufi tradition and is an exploration of pain, resilience, and the sacredness of the feminine in a modern, global world.
Copyright (c) 2024 Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai , Isabella Schwaderer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Himalayan Youth Resist through Art: Debunking “Development” in Kinnaur
This photo essay outlines our reflections on the role of art as a means of protest and, in particular, as an expression of the identity struggle that drives resistance. “Artivism” as a form of protest seems to be (re)gaining traction, especially in youth mobilizations worldwide. Our case study is from the Kinnaur district in the western Indian Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. Launched as a mobilization against the negative impacts of hydropower projects in the region, the No Means No campaign is likely on its way to becoming a broader socioecological movement that confronts the adversities of state-led development policies and mobilizes cultural identity in creative ways. Art in various forms, from paintings and rock graffiti to poems and songs, plays a significant role. Against the backdrop of current debates on environmentalism, identity politics, and political aesthetics, the primary aim of this essay is to situate the selected artifacts in relation to the campaign and give their creators a voice—or an image.
Copyright (c) 2023 Pramiti Negi, Hanna Werner http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Seduction of the old City of Srinagar: An Enquiry into Competing Narratives of Belonging
This essay explores the various narratives of belonging vis-a-vis the city of Srinagar. As the city witnesses massive transformations politically and socially, the interplay between space and power acquires new forms. In this essay, I map this interplay through the elite narrative, the porno-tropic narrative, and the localist narrative to the city.
Copyright (c) 2023 Arshi Javaid http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Khuddur Yātrā: a Symphonic Poem of Texts and Images
This essay offers an analysis of text-image relations in Abanindranath Tagore’s often overlooked work, Khuddur yātrā. The work is an experimental yātrā-play for children based on the Rāmāyaṇa, and was published in facsimile for the first time in 2009. The manuscript is illustrated with cutouts from newspapers, periodicals, and product wraps, creating a diverse visual landscape. The text of the play, equally complex, weaves together traditional Rāmāyaṇa heroes with new characters, while employing a multitude of languages and dialects. After providing a detailed overview of the work and categorizing text-image relations within it, this essay focuses on the single most complex and experimental one among those. Following Bachtin, who proposed to analyze literary work by using the musical concept of polyphony metaphorically, the author argues that the concept of symphonic poems provides the best way to approach the complexity of text-image congruencies in this work. Additionally, the essay explores some the thematic and visual connections between Abanindranath Tagore’s Khuddur yātrā and the broader landscape of Bengali children’s literature in the early 20th century. Upon closer examination, Khuddur yātrā emerges as a dynamic and layered artistic creation that challenges the viewer to construct new meanings when navigating the complex interplay of text and images. The text and images within the narrative perform various simultaneous functions, thereby encouraging both children and adults to construct, deconstruct, interpret, and reassess the surrounding reality. Abanindranath’s playful use of signs, symbols, and language reveals the intricate interconnectedness of the world, prompting viewers to recognize its complex and intertwined nature.
Copyright (c) 2023 Elizaveta Ilves http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Siddha Photography. Making the Invisible Visible in Siddha Pharmacology
This photo essay explores the intricate practices of Siddha pharmacology in Tamil Nadu, India, as documented during field research conducted at the Puttu Maharishi Ashram in Vellore. The essay also examines the role of photography as a research tool, one that is used here to capture moments and processes in Siddha medicine that extend beyond the reach of textual description. The focus is directed toward two significant practices: Pudam, a detailed calcination process integral to medicine making, and Velvi, a full moon fire ritual symbolizing the spiritual dimension of Siddha practice. These practices serve as vital components in the construction and expression of the Siddha medical tradition, highlighting the unique interplay between material and spiritual elements. The photo essay serves as a window into the world of Siddha pharmacology, allowing for an immersive experience of its aesthetic and transformative aspects. Photography is employed not merely as a documentary tool but as a medium for intersubjectivity, inviting readers to engage with the subtle intricacies of this ancient healing tradition. The essay aims to render the invisible spiritual dimensions of Siddha medicine visible.
Copyright (c) 2023 Justus Weiss http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
As a Pakistani who grew up watching pirated Bollywood cinema, I have an intimate but distant relationship with Mumbai on screen. I have been watching fewer Bollywood films lately and am also starting to forget the narratives of the ones I watched growing up. But I still remember certain details of my mythical Mumbai, as constructed by the Hindi films I consumed as a child and teenager. In my video Karachi to Mumbai via Bollywood Express (2023), I use Hindi film imagery of Mumbai’s local railways as a means of transportation to this mythical city. The video is a comment on my relationship with this city, its trains, and the films that feature them. Intended to be played as a loop, much like imagery being replayed in one’s mind, the video makes use of fragmented, glitchy footage from Saathiya (“Companion,” Ali 2002) and Ek Chalis Ki Last Local (“The Last Local of 1:40,” Khanduri 2007), two films that feature the city and its railway system. In this essay, I reflect on the process of making the video loop and build on scholarship and works that explore how films depict and construct spaces, how they bypass bans and barriers, how they travel and transport viewers, and how they are remembered and forgotten.
Copyright (c) 2023 Fahad Naveed http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Witnessing in Solidarity. Recording the Legacy of Shaheen Bagh through Visual Art
This article delves into the transformative power of art and media in shaping narratives of solidarity and resistance within the context of the historic Shaheen Bagh protests that unfolded in New Delhi during the winter of 2019/20. These protests, sparked by the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), witnessed a unique convergence of Muslim women as protest leaders. The gendered perception of the Muslim minority in India was subsequently redefined. The movement also introduced innovative forms of feminist solidarity and non-violent protest strategies, including the use of digital tools for transnational outreach. The article spotlights the artistic endeavors of two young women artists who utilized their creative talents to bear witness to the events and craft testimonials for posterity. Prarthna Singh’s photo book, Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh (2022), and Ita Mehrotra’s graphic novel, Shaheen Bagh: A Graphic Recollection (2021), serve as case studies to investigate the processes of visually mediating the legacy of the Shaheen Bagh movement. Key aspects explored in this inquiry about witnessing and memory-making include the production and mediation of solidarity through art and media, the narratives conveyed by these visual works, prevalent visual tropes within works, the interplay of gender and resistance in their narratives, the new spaces opened up by these artistic interventions, and the positioning and framing of the artists themselves.
Copyright (c) 2023 Fritzi-Marie Titzmann http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This is the fourth edition of Dastavezi The Audio-Visual South Asia, and we are happy to welcome five authors from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Germany, and the United Kingdom as contributors. Aside from two documentary films and two photo essays, we extend our repertoire to feature a piece by the singer and artist Wajiha Naqvi, who, with the help of one of her audio recordings, reflects on how her embodied practice produces affective atmospheres.
Copyright (c) 2022 Jürgen Schaflechner, Max Kramer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Thirty years after shooting their student documentary on cinema and media change in India, one of the three (female, Western) filmmakers contemplates the gendered and cultural conditions of creating the film and how they resonate with the trajectory that Indian politics has taken over these past few decades. The film is a self-reflective journey into different protagonists’ relations to images and various media in an era of globalization that was sold as promising, liberating, and empowering as much as it was rife with apprehensions of westernization. The essay fleshes out that, in hindsight, the film bears many early signs of the socio-economic frictions, the forms of entitlement, and the ultimately brutal transformation that neoliberalism and Hindu nationalism have since enforced.
Copyright (c) 2022 Britta Ohm, Panesar Rita, Andrea Horakh http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This visual essay explores the daily life and rhythms of a photography studio in Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka. Here, I reflect on the enduring entanglements of war and everyday image-making practices in the postwar period. The accompanying visuals cast the studio space as one of stillness and movement, where photography exists as an act of communal production and aspiration in a setting marked by political unrest and inequity. Even as advancements in technology and digital photography have further allowed the studio to be integrated into the surveillance, security, and documentation regimes of the state and state-like actors, the work of studio photographers positions them as the determined arbiters of their clients’ anticipated futures. The day-to-day routines of studios reflected the lingering effects of war on aspirations for citizenship. When taken together with the possibilities for mobility that are afforded by the Tamil community’s displacement and dispersal, as caused by conflict, the role of photography in realizing these hopes becomes apparent.
Copyright (c) 2022 Vindhya Buthpitiya http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This essay, elaborates on the process of making the film Lanka: The Other Side of War and Peace. On the one hand, it discusses the intricacies of memory and reconciliation in the context of the Sri Lankan Conflict from the film maker's personal recollection. On the other hand, it provides a glimpse into the film's political aesthetics, camera work, protagonists, audience, and the conceptualization of the power of documentary film to open our collective imagination and create empathy.
Copyright (c) 2022 Iffat Fatima http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Searching for sur through Sufi-Islamic Devotion
Drawing on my vocal training experiences from my on-going Hindustani classical music apprenticeship under a Qawwali practitioner in Karachi, Pakistan, since 2016, this multi-mediated essay, which includes an audio recording of my performance, demonstrates how specific ideas of Sufi-Islamic devotion are cultivated and embodied in Hindustani classical music through both song lyrics and bodily actions. Through this piece, my attempt is to dispel certain unfounded public misconceptions within Pakistan on music’s compatibility with Islam, particularly with respect to the Pakistani state’s complicated relationship towards its Hindustani classical music heritage.
Copyright (c) 2022 Wajiha Ather Naqvi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Projecting Empowerment: Camera Politics in and beyond Twentieth-Century South Asia
This essay reflects on the ongoing mobilization of the camera as a tool for empowerment in the Global South by revisiting the controversy around Born into Brothels (2004) and its American director’s efforts to teach photography to the children of sex workers in Kolkata. The aesthetic production being demanded and, just as importantly, side-lined by the award-winning film was thrown into relief by the counter-production We are Foot Soldiers (2011), whose irreverent and sceptical energy remains instructive.
Copyright (c) 2022 Mallika Leuzinger http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Film, Photo, and Text: Relation-making, Intensive Genres, and Realism
Throughout Dastavezi’s brief existence, this introduction has become a train of thought and a conversation for both of us, where we reflect on the ever-changing landscape of multi-mediated forms of knowledge production in and from South Asia. This reflection—which we called Slow Theory—emerges from two of our fundamental convictions: 1.) New ways of theorizing the world demand thinking with and through new forms of art and media. 2.) Phenomena from the Global South help to “air out” (Viveiros de Castro 2003) a form of theory that has become accustomed to utilizing mainly North American and European case studies and philosophers. In this issue, we, therefore, increase Dastavezi’s range of used media to include photo essays reflecting on the potentialities of image and text regarding labor migration in Kerala (Karinkurayil) and religious nationalism in Pune (Larios).
Copyright (c) 2021 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Abir Bazaz tackles the question of what it means to make a film about the Sufi traditions of the Kashmir Valley. In conversation with Max Kramer he talks about the film-form and Dastavezi’s interest in aesthetics and theory.
Birthday Party in Saffron – Pune’s Śivājī Jayantī Celebration in 2020
This photo-essay on the public festival that celebrates the Maratha king-hero Śivājī was performed in the city of Pune, India in 2020. The essay reflects upon the practice of photography as a research tool that not only provides the researcher with the opportunity to capture that which is not possible to convey with words alone, but also “frames” an aesthetic moment that serves as a visual commentary. During such public festivals, parts of the city become stages saturated with symbols and the theatricality of performing one’s Hindu identity. The creative manipulation of symbols facilitates the construction of this practice with Hindu pride at its center: a habitus that potentially leads to collective activism and, if needed, violence. Public festivals are understood by the author as Schaufenster (shop windows) that allow him to observe and experience social rhythms first hand and, at the same time, reflect on the role of the images and their circulation for the participants‘ construction of their identity. Primarily young men and increasingly young women are inexorably drawn into the mythicized Śivājī stories on social media, television, and cinema, developing a reactionary vision of themselves and the nation as proudly Hindu.
Drawing on interviews and scenes from For My Country, a documentary film about Pakistan’s women’s cricket team directed by Sadia Quraeshi Shepard and Samina Quraeshi, as well as interviews with former women’s team captain Sana Mir conducted between 2012 and 2021, this paper demonstrates the patriotism and interest in subverting dominant gender norms that motivates many of Pakistan’s professional female cricketers as well as the integral role that supportive male family members play in their careers.
Copyright (c) 2021 Sadia Quraeshi Shepard http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
While revisiting the film Sufis Entangled ten years after its release, the three filmmakers engage in questions of production, form, and historical context. The essays that constitute this piece highlight the intricate ways in which cultural-religious conflicts are enmeshed in the material realities of the filmmaking process.
Copyright (c) 2021 Max Kramer http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
This paper asks what it is to engage with a photograph as an artifact of the quotidian, if the photograph has exited the social sphere. The paper begins with recounting the importance of the labour migration from the South Indian state of Kerala to the countries of the Arab Gulf. Malayalam (predominant language of Kerala) literature and cinema on the Gulf has been unable to forge a new discourse around migration and the labouring body or the fantastic riches that symbolize it. Unburdened by a long tradition, photographs allowed the visual intensities of cinema to be unmoored from the pull of its narrative. In the process, the photographs became a site of communicating the affective intensities of the Gulf. However, these photographs from an earlier era now lay stowed away in forgotten corners of the migrant houses, if not lost completely. This poses questions for the academic who studies the photographs not only for their value as historical records but also as a visual practice – how to engage with this disengagement which wears out the image? How does this closeting affect our understandings of photograph as projects of memorializing? The paper closes with raising this need for a new vocabulary, a glimpse of which is available to us in Benjaminian “distraction.”
Copyright (c) 2021 Mohamed Shafeeq Karinkurayil http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
With Dastavezi we link writings in Cultural Anthropology, South Asian Studies, and Critical Theory with audio-visual compositions and independent film. Establishing such connections takes time. Dastavezi provides a platform for slow- paced and multi-mediated research in the social sciences to propagate novel, alternative, and critical views on and from South Asia. With the help of the contributions to each issue (audio-visual and written), we reflect on the potentialities and challenges emerging from linking textual and audio-visual formats in social science research. We will continue to use the journal’s introduction as a way to theorize the notion that critical research does not emerge through written discourse alone but results from aesthetic and affective processes that are present in it and intertwined with it.
Copyright (c) 2020 Max Kramer, Jürgen Schaflechner http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Universities are institutions of education and intellectual growth where young minds are nurtured in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom and debate. But many well-known universities in India in the last few years have been subjected to thought control, restrictions, and social discrimination by the administration and the current government. Unfortunately, much of this discrimination is meted out to students and staff belonging to India's marginalized communities, women, and those with liberal and left ideology - identities that the current ruling party and its ideologues have traditionally loathed. Persons with right-wing ideology have been appointed as heads of most institutions to curtail academic freedom while funding and scholarships are cut down for deserving candidates. But the students are not taking such fascism silently. They are protesting against the closing down of democratic spaces and the muzzling of voices in many universities. The prejudice against students of certain 'low caste' had been so drastic that a few students such as Rohit Vemula (Hyderabad) even committed suicide, giving rise to a further heat in the students' protest in many more institutions. Unfortunately, much of India's mainstream media, kowtowing the ruling party's line, has run campaigns to malign the protesting students. While the students' unrest continues in many cities, this film travels to some seven Indian universities (including Jawaharlal Nehru University, Hyderabad Central University and Banaras Hindu University among others) to record what the students and some teachers have to say about how their freedom is being curtailed, and how this movement will not die until they bring some change of perception about the rights of the underprivileged. The film also explores a general decline in the production of knowledge in Indian universities, as enumerated by eminent scholars such as Romilla Thapar, Irfan Habib, Vivek Kumar and Ashok Vajpeyi, among others.
Copyright (c) 2020 Yousuf Saeed (Filmmaker) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Ghungroo is a film that aims to critically reorient dance in the contemporary cultural landscape of Pakistan, focusing mainly on the lived experiences of Dawood Bhatti, a Kathak dancer. Bhatti tackles the binary representation of gender and thus is emblematic of emergent discourses on gender identity and dance in Pakistan. Ghungroo is the depiction of struggle and success derived from the freedom of a gender-fluid identity, using dance as a subversive medium with the power to explore the boundaries of power and patronage.
Copyright (c) 2020 Ali Rizvi http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Navigating around stereotypes of Islam and non-Muslim belonging in Pakistan, Thrust into Heaven showcases instances of so-called “forced conversion” of Hindu girls to Islam. These incidents often follow a sequence: a young Hindu woman disappears from her house or place of work, and resurfaces again as a married and newly converted Muslim. Once a conversion occurs and has been publicly announced, a combination of legal issues and the street power of extremist religious groups makes it nearly impossible for newly converted women to go back to their former life. On the one hand, some of these conversions are utilized to conceal criminal acts including kidnapping, human trafficking, and rape. On the other hand, they are examples of female agency and ways in which young women navigate through Pakistan’s rigid patriarchal society. Struggling for a dialogic approach to this sensitive topic, this film aims to give room to the various interpretations that emerge around the alleged forced conversion of Hindu women to Islam in Pakistan.
Copyright (c) 2020 Jürgen Schaflechner (Filmmaker) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0