Film
DAM/AGE
4:00 pm, November 2, Roxie Theatre
Director: Aradhana Seth
Country: India/USA (2002)
Running Time: 50 mins
35mm color
Hindi and English with subtitles
A Film by Aradhana Seth with Arundhati Roy
DAM/AGE traces writer and activist Arundhati Roy's bold and controversial campaign against the Narmada dam project in India which displaces up to a million people. The author of ‘The God of Small Things’, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1998, Roy has also published ’The Cost of Living’, a book of two essays critical of India's massive dam and irrigation projects, as well as India's successful detonation of a nuclear bomb.
As the film traces the events that led up to her imprisonment, Roy meditates on her own personal negotiation with her fame, the responsibility it places on her as a writer, a political thinker and a citizen. The film shows how Roy chose to use her fame to stand up to powerful interests supported by multinational corporations and the Indian government. For her, the story of the Narmada Valley is not just the story of modern India, but of what is happening in the world today, "Who counts, who doesn't, what matters, what doesn't, what counts as a cost, what doesn't, what counts as collateral damage, what doesn't."
In a clear and accessible manner, the film weaves together a number of issues that lie at the heart of international politics today: from the consequences of development and globalization to the urgent need for state accountability and the freedom of speech.
Q&A with Professor Angana Chatterji of California Institute of Integral Studies
Short film:
'Mangoes' by Bani Abidi, playfully explores the reminiscences of a Pakistani and an Indian woman eating Mangoes.
Pakistan, 3 min, vhs, Color (2000), Urdu and Hindi with English subtitles
Sponsors & Co-presenters:
Sponsored by the Social and Cultural Anthropology Program at California Institute of Integral Studies
South Asian Journalists Association
Ekta
Global Exchange
Friends of South Asia (FOSA)
South Asian Bar Association of Northern California