Khmer with English Subtitles

Description

J Roum and her family were working in Thailand, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic required them to return to Cambodia. Now, she and her husband work on a construction site at the Teuk Thla Bridge in Serey Sophoan in Banteay Meanchey province. However, J Roum and her husband are forced to bring their three children — ages 4, 12 and 14 — with them to work every day because they cannot afford to send them to school.

Tumpuan with English Subtitles

Description

In rural Ratanakiri province, Net Kreak lost his leg after being bitten by a poisonous snake. Following the accident, Net Kreak’s wife left with his children. Now, Net Kreak lives alone with his mother and works a variety of jobs to support them both. Remaining optimistic, he hopes to one day have enough money to buy a customized prosthesis and reunite with his children.

Kreung with English Subtitles

Description

This film is about Ravi Chor Vy, an ambitious Kreung ethnic teacher in Krala Village, Ratanakiri, who fights to preserve the Kreung culture for the improvement of the community. Trying to pass on the Kreung language to the next generation, she does not stop teaching at school even during pregnancy and afterwards carrying her baby in arm. But as children do not understand the value of education, they resist learning and even after going school for years cannot read nor write properly. However, Chor Vy has not given up her teaching efforts and was therefore promoted by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport.

Bunong and Khmer with English Subtitles

Description

Chheol Thouk never wanted to be anything else but a mahout and he roams the forest tending to his elephants. But the natural habitat in Mondulkiri province shrinking due to deforestation threatening the elephants, their ecosystem and Chheol’s way of life.

Cast

Chheol Thouk, Tan Som, Nowl Gee (elephant), Easy Rider (elephant)

Elephant conservation and indigenous experiences in Cambodia: Shaping environmental awareness through participatory filmmaking with young people

This project uses participatory filmmaking to engage young people in the legacies of conflict, post-conflict development challenges and the harms inflicted on the environment. In particular, it focuses on elephant conservation and challenges facing indigenous communities in the Mondolkiri province of Cambodia. It encourages young people to become agents and beneficiaries of change and supports them in the creation of films which explore and can amplify awareness of conservation and indigenous issues across communities.

Cambodia’s forty years of conflict have left a legacy of environmental harms, including wildlife reduction, deforestation and the loss of cultural heritage informing locally grounded approaches to forest management. Cambodia’s transition to peace and subsequent development has witnessed further environmental harms. Wild elephant numbers, in particular, have sharply declined as a consequence of the loss of their natural habitats. Indigenous communities, who have close cultural and spiritual relationships to elephants, suffer particularly as a marginalised group within wider Cambodian society and as a result of development pressures affecting the forests that they reside in. Conservation practice around elephant habitats, and issues facing indigenous communities who live alongside elephants, therefore offers a key site through which to encourage active and empathetic engagement with conservation issues in Cambodia.

The project involves a collaboration between the University of Bath, Queen’s University Belfast, The University of Leeds, Bophana Audio Visual Centre, and Elephant Livelihood Initiative (ELIE). Through the recruitment of 12 young people, who will be trained in co-productive and participatory filmmaking methods, the project will deliver 3 films that can be used as advocacy tools, highlighting exemplary conservation practice, environmental challenges, and issues facing marginalised indigenous communities through field visits to ELIE sites. Screenings will be held in indigenous communities, for conservation practitioners, at international film festivals, and through social media. In addition to encouraging engagement with conservation issues, it will thereby build a new generation of filmmakers in Cambodia, delivering transferable skills and supporting their longer-term employability.

Description

The film is a tale of brotherhood and resentment against the backdrop of mother sea, which is now menacing because of climate change. Rakesh and Ganesh have sea in their veins. The sea is their mother, their lineage. She gave them identity, offered them food and on her lap, their brotherhood has grown. They are Kolis, the indigenous fisherfolk of Bombay. But the loving tolerant mother they always knew is changing in front of their eyes, she is becoming warmer and turning lifeless. Rakesh and Ganesh’s livelihood and even their relationship is now at stake. Worsening climate is leading to conflict between the brothers. It’s distancing one brother from the other, pushing them apart in two directions, different paths of life.

What was the source of inspiration for the film?

My grandparents were born in Pakistan when the country was part of British India. In 1947, India and Pakistan were divided and the two countries have entered into a mortal conflict, which continues today. My grandfather’s family, Sikhs, fled Pakistan to a refugee camp in New Delhi where my father was born. In 1984, whereas my grandparents had managed to leave the camp and build a modest house, it was completely destroyed during an anti-Sikh riot. I was one year old. My family had to move again. I grew up with the trauma of these successive uprootings and a constant fear. This personal story brings me back to the Koli community, whose territory and tradition are also threatened. Bombay is a suffocated city where space is scarce and expensive. The Kolis’ lands are now the last available ones in the city center and their owners, whose income depends on increasingly meager fisheries, are often forced to sell them to rich entrepreneurs or politicians who will build luxury residences with a view.

The Kolis who still live there will be driven out in ten years by land pressure and rising waters. Even the most resistant, like Rakesh, will inexorably abandon their house and, with it, their way of life, a part of their history and their traditions. Like my father and his family, they will one day be displaced, refugees. The Koli community of Bombay will be sacrificed for lucrative real estate deals and generalized inaction regarding the climate change. It will soon disappear, and I am filming its last stirrings.

My first film Soz: A Ballad of Maladies was an exploration of Kashmir’s disenfranchised youth who struggle to express themselves amid state excess, surrounded by conflict that’s been ongoing for several decades. The story of Kolis resonated with me because it is a world that is being ruptured by forces that are too large to navigate through. I started to recognize the telltale signs of stress and anxiety in the community – that fear of uncertainty felt familiar. With my family it was in the name of religion, with Kashmiris – it’s Nationalism and now with the Kolis – it’s Development.

In which social or political context was this created?

On April 20, 2020 – barely a few months into the global Covid 19 pandemic – CNN carried a story Coronavirus pandemic will cause global famines of ‘biblical proportions,’ UN warns. The Atlantic Council of US in their Global Risks 2035 Update have predicted that major cities of the world including Bombay will be submerged by 2035 (15 years sooner than the last prediction) because of increasing sea levels caused by climate change.

As we stare at this world of uncertainty – by 2035, the point of no return could be crossed. It will then be extremely unlikely that the international community can stop the Earth’s temperature from rising by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) every year. This increase will kick off a dangerous medley of global climate disasters. The poor are most vulnerable to worsening climate conditions and will be caught in an endless cycle of poverty, hunger and starvation unless we act now.

I first started engaging with ‘Koli Fish Seller Women’s Collective’ in 2017 when they were in an ongoing struggle against Municipality authorities’ attempts to turn their 200 year old fish market into a commercial complex. I made short videos to help the women create a digital campaign to gain support from Bombay civil society. It is during the groundwork for this campaign that I first met Ganesh who opened up another perspective. This good-looking educated young man was a torchbearer of modernity with a definite vision for Koli future. His brother Rakesh who I’d already met through his mother (she was part of the women fishermen collective) seemed very grounded in tradition. Over the years, the brothers became my guides, my champions and this close association with them made me realize that Indigenous communities like the Kolis who are already on the brink of extinction can play a crucial role in staving off the impending food crisis.

The need of the hour is to protect and learn from these communities that have lived alongside and harvested nature through their sustainable methods that make a part of their ancient knowledge system.The difference in Ganesh & Rakesh’s outlook on survival reflect the differences in their fishing techniques – the resultant havoc that it is causing in the microcosm of this ‘family’ is merely a reflection of the bigger crisis that we are facing today. “Kolis were always self sustained,” Ganesh often says to me. “We were forced to adapt, to transition to modernity. As the world around us became crueler and survival more challenging, we too had to readjust our perspective on the sea from being a mother to a resource meant for exploitation.”

What were the main challenges encountered?  

The challenges are ongoing and better discussed than written about.

What should the audience know about this film?

Against the Tide builds on the same theme as Soz – ‘fraying of social fabric in communities under sustained conflict’ however it’s a departure from my first film in structure and form. Unlike Soz, Against the Tide is intended to be a narrative driven creative documentary. I’ve spent years nurturing the narrative so I can tell a truly intimate human story of climate conflict as lived by this family. With this film I want to further my craft as a non-fiction story teller.

Khoon Diy Baarav is a non-sequential account of personal narratives and reminiscences ruptured by violence, undermined by erasure and over-ridden by official documents that challenge truth. It explores memory as a mode of resistance, constantly confronting reality and morphing from the personal to the political, the individual to the collective. Struggling to find new ways of expression – storytelling, art, symbol and ritual – sometimes spilling out on to the streets, it looks at the ways in which those affected by violence have no choice but to remember.

I completed Khoon Diy Baarav (Blood Leaves its Trail) in June 2015, after working on it for about 9 years. During these years, travelling across the Indian-controlled Kashmir, I became a witness to the inevitable consequences of large scale militarization- torture, rape, extra judicial killings, exhumations, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearances. The film is a consequence of my bearing witness.

I got introduced to the issue of Enforced Involuntary Disappearances (EID) and its devastating impact on the affected families in Sri Lanka where I lived and worked between the years 2000 and 2005. EID is a heinous crime under which persons are arrested, detained or abducted by state forces or their agents, who deny that they are being incarcerated or conceal their whereabouts, placing them outside the protection of law. The discovery of thousands of mass graves is a grim reminder of the reality of EID in Kashmir (SHRC, 2011). It is difficult to compute exact figures, human rights groups estimate that about 8,000 to 10, 000 persons have been subjected to EID since 1989.

After my return from Sri Lanka in 2006 I started working with the families of the victims of EID in Kashmir come together under the banner of The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). As I started interacting with the affected people I got drawn into their struggle- it became less about the film and more about their struggle which was unfolding before me on a day to day basis. I didn’t have any particular concept or plan, but I was documenting the struggle. That engagement, documentation of the living struggle, that was critical. The camera became an agent for the families. They had a clear understanding that it is a powerful tool for taking their issues forward. When they would speak to the camera, it was as though a validation of their struggle. Kashmir is one of the most militarized zones in the world. It has the highest number of military forces, not just on the borders but in towns and cities where people are living. So when the military is so omnipresent, things are bound to happen… Both the camera and the film subjects are constantly confronting and overcoming obstacles- checkpoints, armed personnel stopping the camera and the subjects- snd I was recording that. The camera experienced and became a participant in the film subjects experience thus becoming a direct witness to what is being recounted and remembered.

In 2010, there was a paradigm shift in the movement for self- determination in Kashmir wherein people reclaimed their lons struggle which was consumed by the gun. People were regularly coming out into the streets in thousands, and were being brutally crushed. As I saw young people being killed I felt that it was time to put it all together. I had hundreds of hours of material by then.

How to frame the material and put it together was quite a demanding process; I wanted to open out the experience of everyday life in a place which is highly militarized and controlled and evoke the imagination of the viewers to the travails of that life. I think an experiential engagement with the viewers is necessary if you as a filmmaker seek your viewers to challenge their own deeply held opinions or understanding through compassion and empathy. I made several cuts. Digital technology is fluid and enabled me to constantly refine the film through re-editing in response to multiple test screenings during the 9-year long production that finally resulted in Khoon Diy Baarav.

Khoon Diy Baarav is a term often, very often used by the affected people to express resistance as well as their demand for justice. It’s a complex saying; translating it effectively is almost impossible, broadly it implies that blood that is spilled will not go waste, it will extract justice. In other words blood that is shed through oppression and violence sediments in memory and will re-emerge in the form of resistance. From memory comes an empowered form of resistance. Resistance is the key word in Kashmir where people are grappling with the impossibility of justice from the Indian state which hasn’t been coming for the last sixty years, and there is little expectation of it in the near future. “The state makes our truth into lies and their own lies into truth”, says Parveena Ahangar who has been leading the battle against enforced disappearances in Kashmir. The film amplifies the voices of women by highlighting the forms of resistance that are less visible. The women in the film whose husbands have been disappeared or killed; they’re single women bringing up their children and at the same time making sure that their disappeared husband remains alive in a certain way in the public sphere. For decades every month they assemble in a public park to demand justice and information about the whereabouts of their loved ones. It’s painful to do that, you’d rather forget and move on in your life. To be able to resist those pressures needs tremendous resilience. As they come out into the public space demanding justice and accountability, these women challenge mainstream perspectives, particularly on gender roles in Muslim societies. They have mobilized an entire community – artists, writers, poets, musicians, students, activists, filmmakers join them in their protest and remembering. It is these women and their sustained courage and struggle that inspires and informs much of my activism, intellectual inquiry and filmmaking.

Description

The film unveils a transformed cultural fabric of Kashmir valley through a journey into the metamorphoses of its traditional practices like Sufiyana music and poetry to contemporary art forms such as Hip Hop and Rock. By evoking the collective memory of their people and unwinding threads of the region’s folk history, the featured artists and musicians in this film negotiate with questions of survival, resistance and freedom – all deeply embroiled in the complex conflict of Kashmir.

My first film Soz: A Ballad of Maladies was an exploration of Kashmir’s disenfranchised youth who struggle to express themselves amid state excess, surrounded by conflict that’s been ongoing for several decades.

What should the audience know about this film?

I co-directed Soz with Tushar Madhav – my college batch-mate from Jamia Milia Islamia University. This film was pulled off on a shoe-string budget of $8,000. While Soz unfurls as a mosaic of stories with a central character of a poet to tell the story of highly militarized valley and her cultural practitioners like hip-hoppers, musicians, painters to evoke a collective memory of their people.

English and Burmese with English Subtitles

Padauk: Myanmar Spring takes the viewer to the streets of Myanmar during the heady days following the February 2021 military coup. Through Nant—a young, first-time protester—we meet three human rights activists whose lives have been turned upside down by the coup. As the protests continue, Nant comes to understand the truth of a brutal regime that has continued to wage war against its own people for decades. ​Against a foreboding backdrop, Nant’s political awakening regarding the plight of others in her ethnically diverse country gives hope for the future. ​Beautifully augmented by poetry and art, Padauk: Myanmar Spring shows the resilience and determination of the people of Myanmar, and the sacrifices they’ve made.

Editor: Peter Potts/AsiaWorks

Producer: Gregg Butensky

Poetry Narration: Kenneth Wong

Motion Graphics: Tak Kogatch

Directed by: Jeanne Marie Hallacy & Rares Michael Ghilezan

Rohingya, Jinghpaw, Burmese, and English with English subtitles

Mother, Daughter, Sister (Amae, Thamee, Ama) exposes the Burmese military’s practice of using rape as a weapon of war and gives voice to Kachin and Rohingya women activists calling for justice for these crimes. Mother, Daughter, Sister revolves around the stories of four women: Shamima, a volunteer counselor working with survivors of military rape in the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, Dil Kayas, a teenage survivor, and San Lung and Lu Ra, sister and mother of two Kachin school teachers brutally raped and killed in 2015, allegedly by the Burmese military. Powerful testimonies from survivors, witnesses, and activists explore the far-reaching impact of sexual violence and trauma upon these communities, and together, the women call for justice and an end to the army’s impunity.

Directed by: Jeanne Hallacy

Produced by: Gregg Butensky
Associate Producers: Rares Michael Ghilezan, Lucy Kang
Director of Photography: Sai Kyaw Khaing
Edited by: Mikael Enlund

Produced by Smile Education and Development Foundation, Yangon

Rakhine, Bengali and Burmese with English subtitles.

Sittwe is about two teenagers separated by conflict and segregation in Burma’s Rakhine state – Phyu Phyu Than, a Rohingya girl and Aung San Myint, a Buddhist boy. Both youth saw their homes burned down during communal violence in 2012. Phyu Phyu Than is confined in an apartheid-style camp and has no chance to go to school or travel to her home just a few miles away. Aung San Myint’s family struggles to survive and support his high school studies to fulfill his dream to go to medical school. Interviews filmed over two years with the teenagers reveal their ideas about each other’s communities and the hope of reconciliation. Sittwe was produced as a tool for facilitated discussions about peace-building in Burma. The film was due to premiere in Yangon at the Human Rights, Human Dignity Film Festival but was banned by the government censors.

Director: Jeanne Hallacy

Cinematographer: Sai Kyaw Khaing

Editor: Elizabeth Finlayson

On February 22, 2002, after decades of brutal fighting, the Government of Sri Lanka led by Ranil Wikramesinghe and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by Vellupilai Prabhakaran signed a ceasefire agreement. Soon after, in April, 2002, the A9 highway, which links North with South Sri Lanka, was opened to civilian traffic after 12 years. It was a historic moment, ushering in a long awaited period of hope for a negotiated settlement to the ethnic conflict, which for decades seriously embittered the relations between different communities – the Sinhalese, the Tamil and the Muslims – living in Sri Lanka. For those displaced and separated by years of war the A9 highway became the ‘Road to Peace’ and a catalyst for the documentary film on which I worked from 2002 to 2005.

The film, as it  shuttles between north and south, spans the history of last three decades of violence in Sri Lanka juxtaposing the multiple realities of war and peace, which simultaneously exist here. Sri Lanka’s history of violence is pervasive and protracted. The armed Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) insurrection of the 70’s and the 80’s brutally suppressed by the Government, communal riots aided and abetted by the Government, protracted civil war between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, are bloody episodes, wherein hundreds and thousands have been killed, tortured, disappeared and displaced.

The film set out to explore the possibility and the meaning of peace within the context of Sri Lanka’s brutal history of violence. In 2002, as the ceasefire agreement brokered by the Norwegians came into effect, it soon became evident that an official discourse that privileged economic rehabilitation and reconstruction over issues of democracy and human rights was being propagated to facilitate negotiations between the two warring parties. The official discourse  left little scope to investigate into the causes and impact of years of multi layered violence and to find ways of healing the deep wounds in the social fabric. The plight of the thousands who were disappeared, tortured, maimed and displaced remained unacknowledged and forgotten. The main objective of the film was to provide space for people to remember and to reflect upon their past history of violence and brutality and thereby contribute towards the creation of an atmosphere for dialogue and reconciliation.  The film was made through a consultative and collaborative process with lawyers, academics and activists in Sri Lanka.

In April 2003, the peace talks between the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE broke down, and the peace process was stalled. In July 2006, after a four-year fragile ceasefire the war resumed. It formally ended on 18 May 2009 with the killing of the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. The Sri Lankan Army gained control over the entire territory held by the LTTE in north and east. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed in the final months of battle. The government has denied allegations by the U.N. and human rights groups of committing war crimes and abuses during the final offensive against the Tamil Tigers and ignored international demands for an independent investigation.

Most recently in 2015, I travelled to Sri Lanka. Much has changed. In 2004, Tsunami devastated large parts of the southern coastline. LTTE is vanquished and post war reconstruction reshaped much in the country.  Thhe changes are  most dramatic on the 100 km stretch of the A9 that runs through the Vanni.  The site of many bloody battles for over 25 years the highway has been rebuilt at a massive cost.  Travelling on the road from Colombo to Jaffna after all these years was surreal. The highway is completely transformed, all traces of  years of strife have been erased and a pall of normalcy has been very deliberately put over it. Along with the Tamil Tigers, the tens and thousands of lives, every memorial, every cemetery, every shrine on the road has been destroyed. It was frightening. The road on both sides overlooks flat land.  What had happened to all the Palmyra trees with slashed tops that had holes in them?

Nothing of the war remains, all dissolved in asphalt, and paved with pebbles and stones. Except the huge water tank scarred by bullets, a poignant reminder of the deep scars in the collective body of the Tamil survivors, struggling to put together the shredded threads of their lives, after decades of displacement, death and destruction. As new episodes of violence begin to surface large part of the past gets erased from public domain and public discourse in Sri Lanka.  As Milan Kundera says “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against oblivion.” The film Lanka the other side of war and peace  remains a valuable account of personal narratives, images  spaces and places linked to Sri Lanka’s long history of  violent conflict which is being officially and deliberately obliterated from public discourse.

English with English subtitles

Description

A 53 year old man arrives at the voting booth for the first time in his life, to vote for an election of the country that he holds dear to him.  He crosses the ballot card with a fervent hope and resolve that his country deserves an overall transformation, including a new constitution, new leadership that drives the country towards progress and a fresh political culture that unites the people towards progress.  Upon casting his maiden vote, he goes for a stroll to discover an area he had not hitherto seen in his own neighborhood and of himself. He wonders if the vote he just casted is by chance or choice. Perplexed by this question and lost in a labyrinth of newly discovered neighborhood and his own thoughts on democracy, motherland and patriotism, he fumbles to find his way back home. A story of one man’s self-discovery and his quest to find his political self in a climate of uncertainty amidst forces of misfortune and misery created by the recent pandemic.

What was the source of inspiration for the film?

The idea for the film was inspired by meeting a person, Sri Lankan origin, who is usually based in Singapore. He had visited Sri Lanka in early March 2021. The Covid-triggered travel restrictions did not allow him to return to Singapore. He was compelled to be stationed in Sri Lanka for many months. This was the first time he had stayed in his country of origin for the longest time since he left for Europe for studies at the age of 16 years and continued to live there.

Which social or political context was this created?  

The heightening of the civil war in Sri Lanka (1983-2009) witnessed a heavy mobilization of concepts of ‘motherland’ and ‘patriotism’ by the Sri Lankan government which was perceived to be identified with the Sinhalese due to its majority composition and as the Tamil armed movements fought relentlessly for a separate state. While the physical war was fought in the Sri Lankan terrain, an equally intense war of ideology was fought at the international level, legitimizing and delegitimizing the narratives of the two warring parties. It is in the latter terrain that the Sri Lankan migrants and diaspora played an active role somewhat akin to ‘long-distance nationalism’, a concept introduced by the anthropologist Benedict Anderson.  The film strives to superimpose an individual’s reflection on ‘home’ in the current discourse on patriotism in Sri Lanka.  

What were the main challenges encountered?  

Shooting on a strictly controlled day which was the election day in August 2020 due to Covid 19 restrictions.

Director of Photography: Sameera Weerasekara

Editor: Lahiru Kanishka

Music: Nadeeka Guruge

Colorist: Marlan Jayans

Assistant Director: Yoshitha Perera

Concept and Director: Udan Fernando

Sinhala with English subtitles

Description

With their hard-saved $1,000, a young Sri Lankan couple fly to Singapore for a two- week honeymoon, with little or no idea about Covid19. The outbreak spikes during their honeymoon and a lockdown gets imposed. The two-week honeymoon becomes a two-month ordeal with no flights to return and nowhere to stay and with only $ 30 left in hand.

What was the source of inspiration for the film?

Having stayed in Singapore for three months due to the closure of airports during the Covid 19 lock-down, the director, Udan Fernando, finally finds a seat in a special repatriation flight to Colombo. On the eve of his departure, he hears a story that hits him like a virus. It is this story that preoccupies him throughout his two-week quarantine term at a government centre run by the military, in a remote area in Eastern Sri Lanka. Amidst the constant chatter of the fellow quarantine-mates in a small dormitory, the many upheavals at the quarantine centre and the grim circumstances facing him, the director seeks refuge in a corner bed that becomes his working, thinking and dining space. It is at this corner bed that he writes his script based on the story that he had heard before his departure. A Covid Honeymoon –  a film born out of a situation of overlapping crises.

Which social or political context was this created?  

The pandemic situation in Sri Lanka coincided with change of governments. Exacerbated by the unprecedented influence of the pandemic, the film strives to capture the personal, social and political spheres at play.

What were the main challenges encountered?  

The film was shot in the early stages of Covid 19 when there were serious restrictions even on small gatherings and the need to keep physical distance. As such, the production team was limited to a minimum and shooting schedule had to me planned meticulously. Screening was also a major challenge due to Covid 19 related restrictions. The first screening, held in Colombo in August 2021, had to be organized as three screenings over three days, because the number of seats per screening had to be reduced to maintain social distance. 

Cast: Xavier Kanishka, Antoinette Thilakshini Ratnayake Chandana, Prasad Suriyaarachchi

Director of Photography: Sameera Weerasekara

Editor: Lahiru Kanishka

Colorist: Marlon Jayans

Make-up: Mananuwan Rupasinghe

Sound Engineering & Music Arrangement: Lahiru Kanishka

Assistant Director: Yoshitha Perera

Concept, Script & Director: Udan Fernando