Posted by: "Frederick Noronha [फ़रेदà¤" fredericknoronha@gmail.com fredericknoronha
Mon Aug 6, 2007 12:02 pm (PST)
INVITATION-EQUATIONS & Grass Roots Media have the pleasure ofinviting you to the launch of the film 'mahuamemoirs'.
On the occasion we will also inaugurate theexhibition 'Disappear' and release of thepublication' This is our home land'.Respected Mahasweta Devi and Sri. P R Kyndiah, Hon.Union minister for Tribal affairs have kindlyconsented to be the chief guests.Date: 7th August 2007 at 4PMVenue: Dr. Ambedkar auditorium, Andhra Pradesh Bhavan,1 Ashoka road, N Delhi 110001The exhibition and the screening will continue in thesame venue on the8th Augustat conference hall,1st floorbetween 12 and 6 PM.
FILM SYNOPSIS :Mahua Memoirs(Documentary, 82 minutes)They live on lands where mineral treasures have lainburied for centuries; treasures that have now becomethe biggest source of their terror. Through theirstories and songs, Mahua Memoirs unfolds the lifevisions and the struggles of the adivasis against themining that is mercilessly consuming their lands andtheir lives.
Saloo, the bard and Thirku, the Baiga takes us on ajourney through the lives of the many adivasicommunities who live in the mountain tracts andforests of the Eastern Ghats across the states ofAndhra Pradesh, Orissa, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand. Asin most indigenous homelands the world over, theseregions too are rich in natural resources includingminerals; resources that have become the source oftheir greatest insecurities.
Through their stories and songs interwoven through themetaphor of Bewar, a form of shifting cultivationpracticed by many adivasis, the film unravels andunfolds both their life visions and their strugglesagainst the merciless mining that is consuming theirlands and their lives.Since the early nineties particularly, as part of thenew wave of liberalisation, thousands of mining leaseshave been issued, giving away prime Adivasis lands tonational and global private mining corporations.
Andthis despite a number of constitutional safe guardsthat attempt to protect the interests of thesevulnerable communities and their fragile butecologically rich environs with which they share asymbiotic relationship.Any attempt to protest is crushed brutally either withthe ideology of progress or the instruments of rawstate power like the lathi and bullets. In the pastsix years about a hundred Adivasis have been killed bypolice firing.What does this violence mean for a people who remainunseen and unheard? What does the notion of 9 percentgrowth of the national economy, mean for 8 percent ofits people who are the victims of this growth?
Mahua Memoirs makes visible those voices thatsystematically dismantle the claims made by policymakers and industry that projects like mining bring inemployment and therefore development and prosperity tothe region and its people. It is a fact, that majormining districts of the country are also the poorestand most underdeveloped.
Not only because the profitsgenerated from mining never go back to the miningareas or the local communities, but because thedominant paradigm of development within which themining policy has evolved, encourages the extractionand exploitation of the natural wealth of a region insuch a way that it can never be replenished.
This documentary by Grass Roots Media Pvt Ltd is inpartnership with EQUATIONS (www.equitabletouri sm.org)and supported by HIVOS India Regional Office. Topurchase copies of the film, please contactinfo@equitabletouri sm.org.
Director and Photographer: Vinod RajaExecutive Producer: Ashok MaridasScript: Madhu Bhushan & Vinod RajaEditor: Atul GuptaSound Recording: Hari Kumar Pillai & Jayanth Pradhan--Grassroots Media6/2, Oakland Residency, B-1High street, Cooke TownBengaluru-560005INDIATel: 91-80-65719066, 91-80-23342975--
Frederick Noronha Journalist http://fn.goa- india.orgE: fred@bytesforall. org or fredericknoronha@ gmail.comP: +91-832-2409490 M: +91-9970157402Yahoo: fredericknoronha Skype: fredericknoronha GTalk: fredericknoronha784, Sonarbhat, Near Lourdes Convent, Saligao 403511 Goa India
source- cgnet.in
No comments:
Post a Comment