Moreover, the TST funded and mentored six documentaries in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, challenging mainstream visual depictions of sexual violence, showing women as powerless, and exploring the roots of that violence. These are Prasuna Dongol’s moving film Before You Were My Mother (Nepal/India; the Nepali filmmaker travels to her hometown in Manipur, India, to discover what her mother was like before she married her Nepali father), Niharika’s The City That Spoke to Me (India); Rawyan Shayema’s Decoding Gender (Bangladesh; exploring feminism and trans people’s stories, including of Ho Chi Minh Islam, a trans nurse, and Sonjiboni, a trans banker and dancer); Barkha Mukhiya’s Flames of a Continuous Field of Time (on the horrific crimes against Dalits in Nepal), AM Ashfaque’s Face Cover (Sri Lanka, on how the Easter bombings accelerated Islamophobia in Sri Lanka), and Pushpa Rawat’s Sita ke Badalte Roop (The Changing Forms of Sita, a work-in-progress on a woman who plays Sita in the Ramleela, India). Alongside, the Hri Institute organised a stimulating, thoughtful exhibition, Create, Collaborate, Catalyse: Reflections on Sexual Violence in South Asia, with various South Asian artists also challenging the visual depiction of women and sexual violence, curated with Ujen Norbu Gurung of Tulika Kalaa, Kathmandu.

Star musician Arivu of The Casteless Collective—also featuring in Monesh’s docu The Casteless Collective-Prologue, on the revolutionary political, musical group in Chennai, produced by Pa Ranjith, performed many politically daring songs in the course of a panel discussion moderated by AS Panneerselvan.

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As Kanak Mani Dixit writes in the FSA catalogue, about Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley being a confluence of cultures, “well connected to Tibet and to South Asia… It brought in mercenary soldiers from Telangana, at least one god from Kamrup (Machhindranath or Lokeshwar, Bungdya), and priests for Pashupatinath from northern Kerala.” A toast to this melting pot!

Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. 
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com