Film Screening with director Anand Patwardhan
“The World is Family” (वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam), 2023, 96 minutes)
Hindi and Marathi with English subtitles
Best Editing, 2023 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)
Best Documentary Award, 2024 New York Indian film Festival
Best Feature Documentary Award, 2024 International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala
“A vivid evocation of 100 years of history in less than 100 minutes of cinema. An intimate act of family portraiture whose spirited subjects are lovingly painted with humor and deep humanity. A facility with scale whose fluidity in form beautifully reflects the flow of life, death, and history.” IDFA Citation, 2023
वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam), a Sanskrit phrase meaning “the world is family” is a universalist idea that competes with dominant, exclusivist Hindu notions of caste. Anand grew up in a milieu that questioned the latter. The family’s elders had fought for India’s Independence but rarely spoken about it. ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, words enshrined in India’s Constitution, were subconsciously internalized.
As his parents aged, Anand began to film with whatever equipment was at hand. Soon birthdays and family gatherings gave way to oral history. Revisiting home movie footage a decade after his parents had passed, was a revelation. Today self-confessed supremacists whose ideology once inspired the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, are in power. As they rewrite India’s history, memories of the past have become more precious than mere personal nostalgia.
Time: 6:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, New York University, 36 East Eighth Street (between University Place and Greene Street)
REGISTRATION REQUIRED AS BELOW. PHOTO ID REQUIRED TO ATTEND.
ADMISSION IS FREE. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. FIRST COME, FIRST SEATED
Organized by the South Asia Institute at Columbia
Co-sponsored at NYU by the Department of Anthropology; and the Center for Media, Culture, and History; and at Columbia by the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Society of Fellows and the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and the Film Program of the School of the Arts; and at the New School, the India China Institute
Anand Patwardhan has been making political documentaries for over four decades pursuing diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Anand who successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court.
Anand has been an activist ever since he was a student — having participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement; being a volunteer in Caesar Chavez’s United Farm Worker’s Union; working in Kishore Bharati, a rural development and education project in central India; and participating in the Bihar anti-corruption movement in 1974-75 and in the civil liberties and democratic rights movement during and after the 1975-77 Emergency. Since then he has been active in movements for housing rights of the urban poor, for communal harmony and participated in movements against unjust, unsustainable development, militarism and nuclear nationalism.
His documentaries have been honored with awards at film festivals around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel Japan, Nepal, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Singapore, Switzerland, U.K., and the U.S. His films include Reason (Vivek, 2018), Jai Bhim Comrade (2012); War and Peace (Jang aur Aman, 2002); Fishing: In the Sea of Greed (1998); A Narmada Diary (1995); Father, Son and Holy War (Pitra, Putra aur Dharmayuddha, 1995); Ram Ke Naam (In the Name of God, 1992); and others. Anand received a B.A. in English Literature from Bombay University in 1970, won a scholarship to get another B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1972 and earned a Master’s degree in Communications from McGill University in 1982.
