Welcome to the Center for South Asia Outreach website

A Tribe of his Own: The Jounalism of P. Sainath
50 minutes- Grades: 10 - Adult
Produced by Moulins Media
Directed by Joe Mpulins
At a time when government propaganda and corporate spin are increasing presented as fact, and a handful of corporations control the news, A Tribe of His Own reminds us what the news media can be. Believing that responsible journalism can help to change things for the better, Palagummi Sainath wrote a series of 70 articles for The Times of India, detailing the living conditions in the ten poorest districts of the country. After nearly a decade of work and dozens of awards, Sainath remains as passionately committed as ever. A Tribe of His Own follows Sainath to the Indian villages he writes about, exploring this contention that "journalism is for the people, not shareholders."

A Woman's Place
1-hour documentary
Writer: Paromita Vohra
Editors: Maria Nicolo & Talat Shah

A Woman's Place is a national production of Maryland Public Television.

We bet you wouldn't think that there would be similarities in the fight for equality in South Africa, India, and the Midwest in our own United States. Maryland Public Television's program and companion Web site,
A Woman's Place profiles women from three different countries who are fighting for balance and equality in today's world. The central question that the documentary explores is "Can new laws change old way?" The companion Web site provides an extensive, 36-page Educational Guide for the film and beyond.

A WOMAN'S PLACE Project is an international collaborative of women working through media and education to address issues of gender equity and contribute to the process of social change. The Project evolved from an international documentary series on issues of gender and power and now encompasses international outreach and education efforts as well as media education projects with women.

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Afghanistan (Exploring the Taliban Revolution)
(Produced by Films for Humanities and Sciences)
24 min., VHS
In Afghanistan, the Taliban—militant Sunni fundamentalists schooled in Pakistan—have taken over almost all of the country. Will their jihad spread to the Sunni minority of Iran, igniting a rebellion against that country’s Shiite government? Or will Iran strike first, through the Shiite minority living in Afghanistan? This compelling report, filmed by the first crew to enter Afghanistan after America’s anti-terrorist air strikes in 1998, takes a firsthand look at both the results and the implications of the escalating tensions between Afghanistan and its neighbors.

After Shock
By Rakesh Sharma
65 min., (NTSC)
Aftershocks: the Rough Guide to Democracy
In a globalised world the economic interests of giant corporate companies come ever more in conflict with the basic needs of the common man. Here the lowest level of the Indian democracy, the Indian village, comes in the way of commercial development in the new world economy. Aftershock is a touching documentary from the Kutch (Gujarat, India) area, devastated by earthquake on January 26, 2001. Over twenty thousand people died and even more homes were destroyed. But this documentary is neither about the earthquake nor about brave relief volunteers. The director worked as a volunteer in the villages of Julrai and Umarsar. By accident he stumbles upon a delegation from the government-owned Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation while they are forcing people from their homes. The company officials see this earthquake as a god-given opportunity to acquire this land for their own benefit. People are being chased from their land without the rest of the worlds noticing. Not a single story of these events reached television or newspapers in India. The only report exists in the form a relief volunteers documentary, using a DV cam - digital video camera.

The director Rakesh Sharma has worked extensively in film and television since 1985. He works as a consultant for broadcasting channels in the areas of programming, on-air presentation and live television.

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Altar of Fire (3 copies)
By J. Frits Staal
45 min., 1976
This film records a 12-day ritual performed by Nambudiri Brahmins in Kerala, southwest India, in April 1975. This event was possibly the last performance of the Agnicayana, a Vedic ritual of sacrifice dating back 3,000 years and probably the oldest surviving ritual of mankind. Long considered extinct and never witnessed by outsiders, the ceremonies require the participation of seventeen priests, involve libations of Soma juice and oblations of other substances, and are preceded by several months of preparation and rehearsals. They include the construction from a thousand bricks of a fire altar in the shape of a bird.

Angst at Large
By Shankar Barua
60 minutes
Angst at Large, a political documentary, seeks to examine and explore the current chaos in North East India with special reference to Assam. Ravaged by floods every year, Assam for the last two decades in now in the throes of an uncanny kind of crisis. New battle lines are being drawn with an alarming ease and Communities are pitted against each other. Preferences and affiliations are being redefined everyday and average citizen can only experience fear. A working democracy seems to be operating on the surface but a vast majority continues to be mute spectators with drama rife with blood and gore. As rebels fight fro a free Assam, the Indian military has to work overtime to bring them back to the mainstream. The film lets people talk for themselves and seeks a journey to the heart of a region so less known to the outside world.

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BitterSweet
By Sanjeev Chatterjee
43 min., 1995
Focuses on Asian-Indian immigrants in the U.S. who discuss the complex social and personal issues involved in dealing with their dual cultural influences. To most outsiders, the idea of immigrating to America suggest the opportunity to get rich and lead the "good life," but those who undertake this journey, leaving behind their native communities for another culture, are often faced with larger issues than material well being. Interviews with a variety of Asian-Indian immigrants residing in the U.S.--including such notables as Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and painter Mohan Samant--are combined with dramatic voice-overs and self-reflexive passages, all of which illuminate issues of cultural identity and the problems of defining community in an adopted land.

Buddhism: The Great Wheel of Being
(Part of Ashes in the River: Four Religions of India Series)
52 min., 1995
Sikkim occupies a place of rare geographic splendor, and Buddhism is the state's religion. Presents the tenets and history of the belief system founded on the teachings of Buddha. A discussion of the Four Noble Truths, including the Eightfold Path, sheds light on the practice of Buddhism, while ancient monuments testify to the enduring nature of this venerable religion.

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Bundelkhand Express
By Saba Dewan
72 min.,1999, India (NTSC)
Bundelkhand Express is a labour train, which winds through the rocky, arid plains of southern Uttar Pradesh. From districts like Shahuji Maharaj Nagar, it picks up hundreds of children and adults deserting a neglected and impoverished land in search of work. Some of these people are heading towards Mirzapur - the capital of carpet production in India. Liluah, a little tribal girl from a village in Shahuji Maharaj Nagar has not yet taken the train. Ram Sajivan and Bachcha, two young boys in the district town, make a living ferrying the passengers of Bundelkhand Express on a rickshaw, and dream of the day they too will board the train. Bundelkhand Express connects the stories of these children and their parents with the carpet economy. Traditional craft and global capital, meticulous craftsmen and non-artisan exporters tied together by a thin and fine thread, woven into a nightmare. Saba Dewan did her masters in T.V. and Film Production from the Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 1987 and since then has been making independent documentaries. Her work has focused on communalism, gender and sexuality. Her current project is a documentary on the courtesan.

Division of Hearts
By Satti Khanna and Peter Chappell
57 min., 1987
The 1947 British subdivision of colonial India into Pakistan and the independent Indian nation caused the loss of 500,000 lives and the relocation of millions—one of the most extensive movement of peoples ever. After centuries of coexistence, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims became victims of mutual suspicion as violence swept through the countryside. The resulting mass relocations of these groups transformed village populations overnight. In DIVISION OF HEARTS ordinary people from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh — cartdrivers, laborers, tradespeople, farmers — tell this history and recount their own tumultuous experiences. Their memories, combined with archival news film, bear witness to the traumatic birth of two independent nations.

Don’t Ask Why
By Sabiha Sumar
58 min., 1999
Anousheh lives with her strict Muslim parents and two brothers in Karachi, Pakistan. At 17, she is at an age where daughters are usually married off. But Anousheh wants to study and refuses to accept the restrictions her religion and culture have imposed on her personal freedom. It causes conflict with her mother and lengthy discussions with her father. Her desire to be 'as free as her brothers' is drawing her close to the Islamic political party, Jamaat-i-Islami which, although dominated by men, promises the liberating power of Islam for both men and women. The film, by Sabiha Sumar, one of the few independent filmmakers in Pakistan, follows Anousheh as she struggles to realize her dreams and cope with her share of disappointment. It is a beautifully realized and rare portrait of girls in South Asia and their relationship to Islam at the beginning of the 21st century.

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Final Solution
Directed by Rakesh Sharma
India 2004 149 mins

Final Solution is a study of the politics of hate. Set in Gujarat during the period of Feb/March 2002 - July 2003, the film graphically documents the changing face of right-wing politics in Indian through a study of genocidal violence against Moslems. It specifically examines political tendencies reminiscent of the Nazi Germany of early/mid-1930s. Final Solution is anti-hate/violence as "those who forget history are condemned to relive it". Final Solution has won the Wolfgang Staudte award & Special Jury Award (Netpac), Berlinale (2004) Silver Dhow, Zanzibar International film festival (2004), Best Documentary, Big MiniDV 2004 (USA), among others.

Forced
By Kiran Shrestha and Bimal Rawal
25 min.,
A video log on the state of children of far Western Nepal

From Africa... to India: Sidi Music in the Indian Ocean Diaspora
by Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy
74 min., 2003
Sidis descend from Africans who sailed across the Indian Ocean to the west coast of India over many centuries. This documentary project explores the expressions of their Indian and African cultural heritage.

The video begins in the Sidi Fort at Janjira Island, built during the heyday of Sidi powers in the Mughal period.
It then surveys the music and dances of African-Indian men, women, and children in Karnataka, Hyderabad, Bombay, and Gujarat.
Exciting footage of ritual events shows the stages of music during ecstatic trance, exorcism, and celebratory rites, when both male and female Sidi Sufi saints are invoked through euphoric rhythms, voices, and communal dances.
Musical instruments such as footed drums, coconut rattles, armpit-held drums, and braced musical bows show the retention of African musical practices.
In excerpts from a conference for Sidis and scholars, Sidis present their own views on their history, contemporary issues, and future prospects.
The film concludes with exciting concert footage from the first international Sidi tour of England and Wales in 2002.

For more information, go to APSARA Media for Intercultural Education: http://apsara-media.com

India: Defying the Crown
(Part of a Force More Powerful Series)
By Steve York
30 min., 2000
In 1930, Indian nationalists were impatient with British foot-dragging on promises to move India toward self-rule, and appointed Mohandas Gandhi to lead "the final struggle for freedom." Relying on the nonviolent methods he developed in South Africa, Gandhi led a 240-mile march to the seacoast, where he picked up a handful of sea salt and invited his countrymen to do the same - in open violation of the British monopoly on salt production. Millions followed his example. His campaign of civil disobedience - intentional law breaking and imprisonment - swept the country, forcing the British Viceroy to admit that his regime was losing control. Gandhi's actions shattered Indian consent to foreign rule and set his country on the road to independence, which came in 1947. To future generations, Gandhi gave the weapon of nonviolent resistance, which is being continuously refined and developed.

Journeys into Islamic India
50 minutes, 2006 (Films for the Humanities & Sciences)
Muslims arrived in India the same year they entered Spain - and by the end of the 13th century ruled nearly all of the county. This program travels across India by way of Iran, Pakistan, and the Maldives to examine the rich Islamic heritage of the region. The program also observes the Muslim way of life on the subcontinent as it exists today. Sites of note include the Taj Mahal, the Golkonda Fort ruins, and the Charminar monument.

Kaise Jeebo Re! (How Do I Survive, My Friend!)
By Anurag Singh and Jharana Jhaveri
80 min., 1997
In the name of "national interest" men, women and children have been forced out of their homes and lands so that a dam, a mine, a factory or a wildlife sanctuary can be built. Their struggles against this process have been crushed, marginalized or ignored. What happens to their lives after uprootment? The film meets them in India’s city-streets and rural areas as labor, rickshaw-puller, domestic help and the uprooted. "Kaise Jeebo Re!" records the victims account of this uprootment, in this case caused by dams built on the river Narmada; Bargi Dam in the Central state of Madhya Pradesh. It records the arduous and heroic story of a people who have come together to fight a determined battle for justice.

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Kashmir: Valley of Despair
44 min., 1998
This film by Marion Mayer-Hohdahl travels to the Kashmir valley at the foot of the Himalayas to investigate the history of Kashmir, along with the political, religious and ethnic roots of the continuing conflict there. Resentment of the occupying Indian forces, problems caused by the radicalization of Islam among Kashmiri rebels and the impact of the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan are discussed.

Kasthuri: A South Indian Film Star
By Richard Breyer and N.C. Rajamani
30 min., 1995
Depicts the daily life of a South Indian film star. By following her from rehearsals to fan club appearances as well as shopping with her mother, the film uncovers the paradox between her public and private lives. Despite being a successful career woman, the twenty-one-year old Kasthuri is content to have her parents arrange a suitable marriage to a man of their choosing.

Lord of the Dance, Destroyer of Illusion
By Richard Kohn
This film takes us to two small Buddhist monasteries in Mt. Everest region of Nepal where Sherpas and Tibetans preserve a unique way of life and vision of the world. It focuses on the yearly Mani-Rimdu festival and on Trulshig Rinpoche, the Tibetan Lama who directs its performance. This festival originated in Rongphu, Tibet which was destroyed.

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Mahatma Gandhi: The Great Soul Lives
60 min., 2000
This compelling program traces the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi from London, where he first studies law; to South Africa, where he established his first ashram; to India, where he worked tirelessly for independence.

Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night
A film by Sonali Gulati
2005, 27 minutes, DVD
Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night is a documentary on outsourcing of American jobs to India. Told from the perspective of an Indian living in the U.S., the film journeys into India's call centers, where telemarketers acquire American names and accents to service the telephone-support industry of the U.S. The film incorporates animation, live action, and archival footage to explore the complexities of globalization, capitalism, and identity.

Nee Engey 'Where Are You'
INDIA / 2003
Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, other languages of India 153 min
Director, R.V. Ramani

This video can be used for classroom use only.
We cannot lend this video for any other purposes. This film is distributed by Magic Lantern Foundation: www.magiclanternfoundation.org

In search of people who once staged shadow plays across South India, we find that the craft survives and the songs live on. However, now performers dance to film soundtracks, the main business shifts to selling accessories and modern skits are added to the Ramayana shadow puppets. But still the thrill when the light comes on behind the white cloth remains unchanged. While there are many amusing anecdotes, such as the time puppeteers were so hungry they ate the leather dolls, the real joy is the encounter between the directors own free-spirited camerawork and the shadow players.

[Director's Statement] I consider shadow puppeteers to be the original filmmakers who created moving images on the screen. Before the advent of cinema and television, shadow puppet theater was prevalent and extremely popular for many centuries in India. Puppeteers led a nomadic life, traveling, camping, setting up screens, and performing the story of Ramayana, adapting local languages and flavors. Today there are only a few puppeteers still practicing this art form. Stories and lifestyles have changed.

As a practicing documentary filmmaker, I feel one with the predicament of the puppeteers. Independent cinematic expression is getting increasingly difficult, as the medium is getting caught in the whirlpool of commercialization. The rural society of India, which at one point sustained the traditional shadow puppeteers and their performances, is now at a crossroads with changing values. Opportunities for the puppeteers to perform are diminishing. Today we find many of the traditional shadow puppet theater families shifting into other vocations.

In my search for the puppeteers, I experienced a complete sense of belonging with this community. This film with the shadow puppeteers living in South India is a journey in search of a missing link that is common to all communities, cultures, traditions and artistic expressions. The film is a celebration and dedication to the art of moving images, its original practitioners and community, and an impressionistic ethnography reflecting on shadow puppet theater, history, mythology, cinema and our lives.

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New Empire
Directed by Kurush Canteenwala
35 min

New Empire is a visually impressionistic, non-fiction film that attempts to chronicle a personal encounter with neo-colonialism and the accompanying loss of away of urban being. The encounter is set around the memory of an Irani restaurant in Bombay, "New Empire Restaurant and Bakery." The restaurant is now a McDonald's outlet. This films is constructed through images employing the different textural qualities of both Super 8 and 16 mm film. A formal simplicity is the pronounced governing aesthetic and is indicative of the personal nature of the document, and as a resistance to acceptable standards of marketable imagery.

New Empire Restaurant was located directly opposite victoria Terminus or C.S.T Station, which is frequently viewed (historically, architecturally and metaphorically) as the emblem of colonization, modernity and also conversely antiquity in Bombay. Irani restaurants themselves have been the spaces that have stood for the heterogeneous and democratic ethos that used to exemplify the popular social charater of Bombay, although they too are constructions from a previous encounter with imperialism.

The audio narrative is that of a group of friends talking about the changes in Bombay's social spaces, as experienced by them. These conversations occur in the intimacy of the Irani's public space, and were recorded in Irani restaurants where the filmmaker and his friends would meet. The idiom in which the encounter is recalled is local and non-formal. The temporality of the medium is employed to imagine a space, and a relationship that narrators, and the filmmaker had to time, within that space. The film engages broadly with the complex changes occurring in an urban landscape, post-globalization, but seeks to explore them from a personal point of view. It is also simply, like an evening spent at New Empire.

No More Tears Sister: Anatomy of Hope & Betrayal
Directed by Helene Klodawsky
DVD (2004) 78 min

This provocative film explores the price of truth in times of war. Set during the violent ethnic conflict that has enveloped Sri Lanka over decades, the documentary recreates the courageous and vibrant life of renowned human rights activist Dr. Rajani Thiranagama. Mother, anatomy professor, author and symbol of hope, Rajani was assassinated at the age of thirty-five.

Occupation: Millwork
By Anand Patwardhan
20 min., 1996
Textile mills once were the backbones of Bombay's economy, and their laborers provided the city its working class culture. Today, foreign investment and rising real-estate prices have made selling mill lands more profitable than running them. Mill 'sickness' is now an epidemic. OCCUPATION: MILLWORKER records the courageous action of workers who, after a four-year lockout, forcibly occupied The New Great Eastern Mill.

Pakistan: Between Chaitralis and Pathans
51 min
Situated in western Asia, Pakistan occupies a region of political and economic tension. This program looks at Pakistan’s complex relations with Iran, India, and the United States and the contributions of its multicultural population. The influences of Punjabi and Pathan, Sindhi and Baluchi, and Ismaili and Buddhist are all captured, set against the background of life both in cities and in rural communities. The region’s heritage as the seat of the Indus Valley civilization is also explored.

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Partition
By, Ken Mc Mullen
78 min.
Based on Urdu writer's Saadat Hussan Manto's story about the partition of India and Pakistan. McMullen's film focuses on the historical footnote that inmates of lunatic asylums, like prisoners were transferred to Pakistan and Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistan asylums were sent to India. McMullen and co-writer Tariq Ali's adaptation is ambitious; the asylum becomes a reverse mirror for the seeming order of the political order, and the same actors, for emphasis play both the lunatics and the rulers.

Puja: Expressions of Hindu Devotion
By Smithsonian Institute
29 min., 1996
Puja: Expressions of Hindu Devotion introduces viewers to one of the basic elements of Hinduism, the world’s third largest religion. In the Puja, Hindus honor gods and goddesses through rituals focusing on objects – whether an elaborate sculpture of the deity or just a stone – that are believed to be filled with the divine beings spirit. Viewers will hear American Hindus discussing a Puja and what it means to them and will watch as devotees worship deities and offer food, water and flowers, seeking to make a spiritual connection with the gods.
This tape includes three video segments, opening with a narration and open captioned version. The second segment presents a woman worshiping a household shrine, while the third segment shows people conducting Puja at an outdoor shrine to the goddess Chandi in the Puri district of Orissa, India.

Pure Chutney
Directed by Sanjeev Chatterjee
1998. 42min.
Pure Chutney is an exploration of the delicious - and even difficult - mix of Trinidadian-Indian culture. The film takes up as its theme the undeniable hybridity of postcolonial societies, and celebrates in some measure the events and accidents of history that constitute the Indian diaspora. This video portrays interactions with various Trinidadian-Indians, and takes as its point of departure their reflections on what someone in the film calls "our preoccupation with India". The camera and the narrative take the point of view of a U.S.-based Indian writer and photographer traveling in Trinidad. This video-essay appears at a critical time: in India, where right-wing appeals to religious purity are signaling a period of grave crisis for assorted minorities and women; and in the West, where the growing presence of a diasporic Indian population in, for example, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. calls for a sophisticated and complex engagement with the question of Indian identities and difference.

The Mahabharata (Part I, II, III)
By Peter Brooks
3 cassettes: 97, 111, & 110 min., 1990
Peter Brook's innovative contemporary adaptation of the Indian epic, with an international cast. In three parts: "The Game of Dice," "Exile in the Forest," and "The War."

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The Nehru – Gandhi Dynasty
(Recorded off Biography)
180 min.
Here is the fascinating and often tragic story of the Nehru and Gandhi families and their quest to lead India to peace and prosperity. On August 14, 1947, India won independence after 200 years of British rule due to the tireless work and sacrifice of three Hindu nationalists. Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual leader; Jawaharial Nehru, son of Motilal Nehru was elected to political monarch. The next two generations of Nehrus, Indira and her two sons, continued the reign until 1991, when son Rajiv was assassinated by terrorists. This in-depth, insightful program chronicles the dynasty established by the Nehrus and their long lasting influence on one of the largest and most populous countries in the world.

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The Reincarnation of Khensur Rinpoche
(1991, 62 mins, VCR)

Produced and directed by Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam

Choenzey is a 47-year-old monk living in a Tibetan refugee monastery in South India. His spiritual master, Khensur Rinpoche, a revered high lama, has been dead for four years. According to Tibetan belief, he will soon be reincarnated. It is Choenzey's responsibility, as his closest disciple, to find the reincarnation and to look after him. The film follows Choenzey's search and his eventual discovery of an impish but gentle 4-year-old boy who is recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan State Oracle to be the reincarnation. Without sentimentality, the film captures the moving relationship that develops between the erstwhile disciple and his young master.

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Loving Krishna
Directed by Allen Moore & Akos Ostor, Produced by Robert Gardner & Akos Ostor
1985, 40 min.
Loving Krishna looks at the sacred cult of Krishna in one of its local manifestations, and explores the continuing link between worship, arts and crafts, bazaar exchanges, and everyday life. Describing two major festivals—the celebration of Krishna’s birth, and the great Chariot Festival—Loving Krishna examines the central concepts of Hindu Worship: the ritual offerings to the gods, the role of images in worship, the divine play of the gods, and the meaning of devotion.

Pandemic: Facing AIDS
The series is the centerpiece of a multifaceted global campaign to raise awareness of the AIDS crisis, with major funding for the project provided by the AOL Time Warner Foundation. Pandemic: Facing AIDS follows five stories of people living with AIDS in countries around the world, revealing the heartaches and triumphs of coping with a stigma and effects of the devastating disease. Showing how AIDS tests people in unexpected ways, the series chronicles the minor miracles that occur in the face of doom. Treatment, prevention, education, mother-to-child transmission, the stigma of AIDS, and harm reduction are among the issues explored in the series, as well as the many obstacles and opportunities faced by the individuals in the film.

The five countries profiled in Pandemic: Facing AIDS represent a cross-section of cultures and attitudes regarding HIV/AIDS. In India, a truck driver and his pregnant wife, both HIV-positive, take every precaution to prevent HIV transmission to their baby. Pandemic: Facing AIDS is directed by Rory Kennedy; produced by Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus; narrated by Elton John; original score by Philip Glass with additional music by Miriam Cutler; edited by Kate Amend; directors of photography, Nick Doob and Tom Hurwitz; written by Mark Bailey. For HBO: supervising producer, Nancy Abraham; executive producer, Sheila Nevins. http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/pandemic/

Serpent Mother
Directed by Allen Moore & Akos Ostor, Produced by Robert Gardner
1985, 28 min.
Serpent Mother is about devotion to the Goddess of Snakes and the importance of divine female power in West Bengal Indian life. The film’s focus is the Jhapan festival, the great celebration of snakes. Shown are festival preparations, the role of traditional arts and crafts in the worship of the Goddess, devotional singing, and an exposition of ritual action. The difficult and complex symbolism of the ritual is explained by the participants themselves and this, with the commentary, makes accessible what is, at first glance, exotic and inexplicable behavior.

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Sons of Shiva
Directed and Produced by Robert Gardner & Akos Ostor
1985, 28 min.
Sons of Shiva documents a four-day ceremony of worship of the God Shiva. Devotees are shown from the initial taking of the Sacred thread through gradually intensifying action to a culmination in a variety of ascetic and self-denying practices. The film also depicts informal activities, such as preparing food, and listening to recitals of devotional songs by the famous mendicant Bauls of Bengal.

The Vote
By Pankaj Rishi Kumar
(NTSC)

Shivalinga Worship
Detailed documentation by the Kuppuswami Research Institute, Madras, of the ritual worship (puja) of a shivalinga according to the South Indian Shaivagamas. Duration: approximately 80 minutes.

Spotlight on Ramayana
Media Type: Documentary VideoCurriculum Unit
Release Date: 1995
Audience: Elementary Education
Running Time: 57 min.
For use in conjunction with curriculum developed by Syracuse University
Edited by Hazel Sarah Greenberg. A window opens on the culture of India through this study of the 2500-year old Sanskrit epic of Prince Rama. This fascinating approach to Indian civilization through the Ramayana's plot and characters (who are as appealing as cartoon superheroes but signify profound spiritual values) can be used as a comprehensive interdisciplinary curriculum or a source of individual lessons. 57 minute color video on the history and sociological significance of the Ramayana."

Tantra of Gyuto
By Sheldon Rechlin and Mark Elliot
52 minutes (VHS)
Tantra of Gyuto is an account of Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies by monks of the Gyuto Tantric College. Through ritual and mantric powers the Gyuto monks use a sound to effect a specific change in the individual and the environment around him. Dalai Lama has been filmed introducing the ceremonies. By their sheer inherent potency and concenetration these essential energies bring about direct spiritual phenomenon. It is only in this exceptional time of massive world changes that the Lamas have reversed their practice of secrecy and have allowed certain chants to be heard.

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Trekking on Tradition
By Jennifer Rodes
45 min., 1993
This outstanding production explores the effects of mountain tourism (known as trekking) on a small village in rural Nepal. It examines the views of both the trekkers (Europeans and Americans) and the Nepalese as it weaves a complex patchwork of conflicting dreams, desires, aspirations and frustrations. It illuminates, often humorously, the controversies and ironic nature of cross-cultural encounters engendered by widespread tourism in developing countries. It also powerfully illustrates the dramatic impact of tourism on the traditional practices, culture, and environment of the region.

Turbans
By, Erika Surat Andersen
29 min., 2000
Based on the memoirs of the filmmaker's grandmother, "Turbans" explores the inner struggles of an Asian Indian immigrant family torn between their cultural traditions and the desire for social acceptance in America. Although born in the United States, the Singh boys are attacked for being different. The turbans they wear, a tradition sacred to their Sikh ancestors, serve only to identify them as outsiders in the prejudiced landscape of Astoria, Oregon circa 1918.

Vaastu Marabu
By: Bala Kailasam
52 min., 1992
India is a country where an ancient civilization survives not only in its artifacts but as a living entity. The Vishwakarmas, holders of architectural and artistic heritage, have maintained the skills and the theoreticla basis essential for the designing and executing of almost all facets of the built environment.
This film attempts to bring this heritage to life through one of the foremost sthapatis and documents the theory and practice of the Vaastu tradition before it is lost. Ancient technologies that continue to be used today are shown in great detail. The film documents the process of making sculptures and explores meaning of various symbols, icons and mathematical principles from a point of view of a shilpi (sculptor).

Voices of the Sidis: Two documentaries
by Beheroze Shroff
DVD (2005)

1) We're Indian and African
22 min
This documentary explores the lives of the Afro-Indian Sidis of Bava Gor village in Gujarat. The Sidis talk about the challenges of their work as caretakers of the shrine of their ancestral saint Bava Gor. They also discuss their sacred Goma-Dhammal dance as it is performed for devotees and for spectators. The documentary also gives a glimpse into the spiritual legacy of the Sidis through the Parsi devotees of Bava Gor in Bombay.

2) Ancestral Links
26 min
In this entertaining portrait of an urban Sidi family in Bombay, India, the father Babubhai traces his ancestry to Zanzibar, Tanzania. Babubhai’s wife Fatimaben talks about her grandmother who worked in a Hindu royal court. Finally, Heena the daughter talks about issues of identity. Babubhai also discusses his past work as a stuntman in Bollywood films.

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War & Peace
By Anand Patwardhan
90+ min., 2002
Anand Patwardhan's impressive and impassioned documentary digs beneath the patriotic fervor that followed the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in 1998, revealing the essentially political nature of nuclear proliferation and the divisions in Indian society it both cloaks and fosters. A wide-ranging look at the issue of nuclear nationalism, the film features extensive news footage and a well-rounded series of interviews with government officials, nuclear scientists, pro- and antinuclear activists, and ordinary citizens, including the poor who suffer without recourse the brunt of nuclear testing and uranium mining. ("The government is like a mother," one old man says, shrugging. "If the mother decides to feed poison to her child, what is the child to do?") In their promotion of nuclear weaponry, the logic of international prestige and the global arms trade suffuse the very concept of security with Orwellian irony. At the same time, the film moves beyond India's borders to Pakistan, Japan, and the United States to understand efforts to transcend nuclear world politics by building an international movement for peace.

We Are Not Your Monkeys
By Anand Patwardhan
5 min., 1996
Recently, the brutal 4,000 year-old Indian caste system and its "divine" justification for class hierarchy has come under attack. Modern scholars examining the Sanskrit roots of Hindu mythology have found references to a story about a nomadic Aryan tribe's conquest of darker-skinned indigenous peoples. The Sanskrit word for caste - varna - also means "color." One of the original functions of the caste system, which prohibits inter-caste mingling, may have been to preserve the racial purity of the ruling class. We Are Not Your Monkeys, a song composed by Daya Pawar and sung by Sambhaji Bhagat, offers the dalit (lower caste) perspective on the Ramayana story of Hindu legend, one which refutes the notion of divine superiority.

We're Indian and African: Voices of the Sidis
Director Beheroze Shroff
Documentary, 22 min., 2004
An examination of the Sidis, descendents of Africans living in modern-day India.

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Who Will Cast The First Stone
Directed by Ahmed A. Jamal and Sabiha Sumar
1989, color, 52 mins., VHS
English and Urdu with English subtitles.
Examines the impact of Islamization on women in Pakistan, revealing the oppression and injustice which has led Pakistani women to the forefront of the political struggle for equal rights. In 1979, Zina (defined as adultery, rape or extramarital sex) became a crime against the state punishable by stoning to death. These new laws were intended to promote the middle class image of an ideal Muslim woman--chaste, submissive and confined. This documentary focuses on the case histories of three women and features interviews with them as well as with human rights activists, religious leaders, lawyers and scholars.

WHEN WOMEN UNITE: THE STORY OF AN UPRISING
Directed by Shabnam Virmani and Nata Duvvury
80 min
Telugu with English Subtitles
The film narrates the incredibly moving story of the anti-arrack (state-supplied distilled liquor) movement that led to the eventual ban of arrack sales in Andhra Pradesh in 1995. The movement started when a group of women participating in a literacy program started questioning their oppressed status. Spurred into action by the killing of a village woman (who was beaten to death by her drunk husband when she tried to prevent him from molesting their daughter), they took on the men of the village, the powerful arrack contractors, and the repressive state machinery in a valiant struggle that demanded a stop to the endless supply of arrack to their village (the only village tap dispensed water once in two days while the arrack shop received its supplies twice a day). The movement took hold and spread across the state over a period of four hard-fought years. It was a true grass-roots movement; even today it has no identifiable leaders. The movie documents the incredible courage of these women, their political and social consciousness and their steady realization that, through struggle, they could control their own destiny.

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