Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The Days After...



A person was judicially executed at Kolkata, India on 14th August, 2004.

The state justified it as an examplary punishment for the crime, the person had committed that would act as a deterrent.

One year had elapsed since then.

On the 14th August, 2005 people from different quarters of life was interviewed in search of a big question.

Whether there's any real changes in..... rate of occurances of crime ?

It is a digital survey of the opinions......

Truth Lies Beneath


25th October, 2003. It was the day of Deepavali, festival of lights...

When others were busy in celebrating the sounds and lights of the festival, a girl named Mousumi Ari, of seventeen years of age, was being tortured in her in-laws house. She was murdered eventually.

Mousumi hailed from the family of a poor fisherman in Narayanpur village, Kakdwip, 24 Parganas, India and was married to a boy of her village, at the age of barely sixteen. Her father-in-laws, Swadesh Ari was a home guard in the local Kakdwip Police Station. After her marriage she fell prey to the wrath of her in-laws and was subjected to torture regularly. On the day of Deepavali, she was murdered by Swadesh Ari and his family members.

The administration not only remained mute. An unholy nexus of the police, hospital-morgue authority and legal administration tried to veil the culprits... to establish the murder as a case of suicide. They wiped out the trace of murder and twisted the events to suite their choice.

Apprehending the caucus of some vested interested, Sukumar Sahu, Laxmi Sahu, the parents of Mousumi and their relatives did not cremated the dead body of Mousumi but buried it under the earth in quest of justice.

The film depicts the victim's voice, so far unheard and the experience of the rights activists stood by the side of the victim family.... narrating what happened actually and explores the eventually of Mousumi's murder. It is an exposition of the Criminal Justice System in India.

The film is part of MASUM and AHRC's on going campaign against torture. In protest against the all-pervasive torture in our society and the indifferent attitude of the administration towards the incidents of torture, MASUM and AHRC have jointly taken up the uphill task of continuing a sustained campaign against torture and also pointing out the loopholes in the Criminal Justice System in India.

Ekjon Jhumur

Ekjon Jhumur (Jhumur, the girl) is the story of a self-respectful, independent-minded young lady of today in her late twenties. Her consciousness of life, morality and her own entity are intermingled with theater. The undaunted spirit places her above the nitty-gritty of daily life. She seeks emancipation through her medium of self-expression - the theater.

The patriarchal society seems not to be tolerant with her sense of emancipation. It tries to delimit her within the conventional notion of womanhood. From the elders in the vicinity like Bhattacherjee or Mallickbabu to the local ruffians - Jaga, Patla and Buro, everyone is eager to snatch her freedom.

In this gloomy atmosphere, her only refuge is her close proximity with Rajat, a theater director - already married and father of a daughter. From closeness to love or something beyond… Her love for life, theater, and Rajat become inseparable in such a way, she could not resist. The conventional society wants to shatter her relationship with Rajat and to teach a lesson.

Incidentally, Rajat has to take the responsibility of directing a drama to be played in the annual function of the local club. Jhumur is in the role of a female lead. Everyone thinks - something has to be done. In the pretext of rehearsal, the ruffians took Jhumur to a wrong destination and raped her.

Jhumur falls prey to the crime of the rapists. But who are the culprits? Is it the ruffians or the patriarchal society? There is no redress as it gets patronisation of the political parties. There's only women's fight against conventional society. A fight - Jhumur's own. Her ammunition - her challenge - the theater.

2002, PAL, DVD, 44 minutes