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Uma Chakravarty

História

Uma Chakravarti is a feminist historian turned filmmaker. She has taught history to many generations of women students and been associated with the women's movement and the movement for democratic rights. She has co-authored Delhi Riots: Three days in the Life of a Nation and published books on Buddhism, Caste and Gender, among others. Deeply rooted in history, memory and the archive, her first film A Quiet Little Entry explored the plight of women’s lives during the National Movement, while Fragments of a Past revolves around a political activist who does not remember her own past.

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Filmes

Prison Diaries

Director

Story of the unexpected imprisonment of a number of women, for their resistance to the Emergency of 1975-77, through the life of Socialist and famous actor Snehalata Reddy. Being the only woman political prisoner in jail, she spent eight months in solitary confinement, recording her concerns and traumatic experiences in her diary, extracts of which were later published. Released for a few weeks on parole, she died of a heart attack just before she was to return to jail. The film recounts her ordeal through the reminiscences of her children and close friends.

Ek Inquilab Aur Aaya

Director

A documentary set in Firanghi Mahal, an institution for rationalist Islamic scholarship founded in the late 17th century. Through two women, Sughra Fatema and her niece Khadija Ansari, it tells the unknown stories of women and their struggles to find their own ways of being in a time of dramatic changes. One wrote poetry to express herself and the other became a student activist who went to jail for being a revolutionary.

A Quiet Little Entry

Director

The film is about an unknown woman, Subbalakshmi who lived between the salt pans and thousands of other places in her mind and left behind a trunk, a diary and scraps of paper. She had participated like many others in the movement for independence in the 1920's and 30's but was forced by circumstances to withdraw from active participation. It is a film about the choices women are denied but who struggle to find other ways of expressing their resistance.

FRAGMENTS OF A PAST

Director

The Film locates the life and work of a woman political activist in her everyday existence, the relationships she lives out at home and in her work and the political affiliations she tries to hold together, even as they are subjected to multiple stresses.