Events
National Curtain Raiser, ViBGYOR 2008 and Premier Screening of 'Yis As Akh Padshah Bai'
Bangalore, January 18th and 19th, 2008
The National Curtain Raiser Festival of the third edition of ViBGYOR Film Festival for Short and Documentary films will be held on 18th and 19th of January 2008 in Bangalore. The event will open with the premier screening of the film 'Yi As Akh Padshah Bai' (There was a Queen) produced by Other Media Communications on 18th evening. It will be attended by the representatives of Association of Parents of the Disappeared Persons (APDP) from Kashmir and the film directors. The screening will be followed by an interaction with the representatives of APDP and the directors of the film. This is organised at 5pm in Charles Ranson Hall, UTC, 17 Millers Road. The screening of the films from ViBGYOR package will continue on 19th from 10am to 9pm in SCM House, Mission Road. All are invited.
Organised by ViBGYOR Film Collective and The Other Media, Supported by Environmrnt Support Group, NESA, SICHREM, VISTHAR, SANGAMA, Visual Search, Moving Republic, SCM and UTC.
The third edition of ViBGYOR will be held from February 13th to 17th 2008 in Thrissur, Kerala. Around 200 films from all over the world will be screened in various categories and packages.
For more details: vibgyorfilm.com / othermediacommunications.com
*Synopsis of the film* "Yi As Akh Padshah Bai" (There was a Queen�) 1 hour, 30 minutes Kashmiri/Urdu/Hindi/English with English subtitles An Other Media Communications' Production * * All Women Crew Directed by Kavita Pai / Hansa Thapliyal Camera: Ranu Ghosh Sound: Gissy Michael Editing: Gouri Patwardhan Music: Manish J. Tipu
Executive Producer: E. Deenadayalan * * *Synopsis*
"Give us guns and we'll play our role!" - These are not the words of a hardened criminal, these are the words of a teenaged girl in Kashmir less than a week after her sister was buried. Farha's sister Shahnaza, and her friend, Ulfat, victims of 'crossfire', would have been adult women today - they were barely seventeen when they died, as old as the *tehreek*, the movement, that exploded into existence in 1989, shattering forever the peace of the Valley, and turning it into one of the most critical conflict zones in the world.
Over these eighteen years, flashes of intensified conflict and bouts of negotiations have followed one another with monotonous regularity in Kashmir. Newspapers and television channels manufacture predictable binary images of conflict � angry men and weeping women, peace loving Kashmiris and terrorist Kashmiris, misguided innocents and fundamentalist separatists, victims and aggressors. Over and above these is the image that erases all differences � the Kashmiri as terrorist.
When we set out to make a film on peace initiatives by women in conflict, the question uppermost in our minds was, are women in Kashmir not Kashmiri, do they really want peace? What kind of peace? And what about the men, don't they want peace too, aren't they human? If both men and women want peace, then what is the conflict about? Can 'peace' still the turmoil at the heart of every Kashmiri? What then are the conditions for peace?
It felt strange to speak to women, only women, ignoring the other half. So we spoke to a few men � one a former militant, another who had sent his son for training across the border with his blessings, a third who had lost his son and then realized he was a militant, a fourth whose brother was killed in crossfire � we spoke to men and realized that while every story had the power to shock and move, the women's stories were compelling in their honesty, in their rage, in their helplessness, in their grief, in their contempt, in their fierce refusal to forget, in their determination to survive, to nurture. It is through these women � proud, strong, with an undying zest for life � that we examine what peace means and how it can come about in Kashmir.
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