Subasri Krishnan Filmmaker presented his research entitled ‘Subasri Krishnan will screen and discuss her film “What the Fields Remember”’ at the Sociological Research Colloquium.
When: Friday, 4th November, 2016 at 3:00 p.m.
Where: Seminar Room (First Floor), Department of Sociology, University of Delhi
SYNOPSIS
Duration: 52 mins/HD/Bengali and English
On 18th February 1983, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, more than 2000 Bengali speaking Muslims were killed in the town of Nellie and its surrounding villages in Assam, India. People’s homes were burnt down and their fields destroyed. Most of those who died were old people, women and children. Till date the Nellie massacre, remains on the margins of India’s public history, and is virtually wiped out from the nation’s collective memory.
The documentary film What the Fields Remember revisits the massacre three decades later. From the survivors, Sirajuddin Ahmed and Abdul Khayer’s, retelling of the event, and their struggles of coping with loss and memories that refuse to fade away, the film attempts to explore ideas of violence, memory and justice. It also tries to understand how physical spaces that have witnessed the violence continue to mark people’s relationship to history and memory. What the Fields Remember also attempts to raise larger questions around collective memory – of what we choose to remember and why we choose to forget.
Trailer of the film: https://vimeo.com/133054355
More about the film can be found here: https://whatthefieldsremember.wordpress.com/
About the Speaker
Subasri has been filmmaker for more than a decade. She also heads the Media Lab of the Indian Institute for Human Settlement (IIHS). Her documentary films deal with contemporary politics. Her first documentary film “Brave New Medium” on internet censorship in South-‐East Asia, has been screened at film festivals, both nationally and internationally. The award-‐winning “This or That Particular Person” looks at the idea of official identity documents, and in that context, the Unique Identity number. The film was adjudged as the Best Short Documentary Film at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), 2013. Her new documentary film “What The Fields Remember” explores ideas of memory, violence and justice through survivors’ narratives of the massacre. As part of the Media Lab at IIHS, she teaches and curates the Urban Lens film festival. Prior to going to film school, Subasri worked for the academic journal ‘Seminar’.
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