Volume CXXXIII, Number 17 February 22, 2002 f

Film festival provides taste of South Asia
HANNAH DEAN
STAFF WRITER

This Sunday, February 24, there will be a feast of South Asian culture both in the culinary and cinematic vein for your alimentary and viewing pleasure.
Sponsored by Anokha, the Bowdoin South Asian Association, the Departments of History, Asian Studies, Anthropology, and Sociology, the festival will include a total of seven films. These short, documentary features are divided into four basic categories-politics, the environment, sexuality, and labor.

The films were chosen, said visiting history instructor Munis Faruqui, after all the films available for the festival were viewed and the ones that "told their story most effectively" were singled out for the presentation.

"The movies" said Faruqui, "are largely intended to highlight the dynamism and also difficulties of life in South Asia." However, Faruqui emphasized that the films being shown will "resonate with a broad audience that may know little about South Asia."

This is made possible by the fact "that many of the concerns that drive both the documentary filmmakers and the subjects of their films are not peculiarly South Asian in nature," he explained.

Instead, said Faruiqui, "the issues raised in most of the movies are not so different from the things that we want addressed in our own society." Issues covered in the films, such as "the need to protect at least a part of our 'green' heritage" and the need to "protect jobs," are universal enough that they touch everyone's lives to some degree.

The films voice distinctly South Asian viewpoints. However, discussions that are to be held following each section of films will "provide a larger context for the movies."

"The primary motivation for organizing the documentary film festival," said Faruqui, "had to do with a desire to offer students a chance to engage, if only for a few hours, with the complexity…of South Asia."

Faruqui hopes that the films will "encourage [students] to take one of the many South Asia-related course offerings in Religion, Anthropology, or History here at Bowdoin College."

The first film of the festival will begin at 10:45 a.m. and the last documentary will begin at 3:45 p.m. Lunch, catered by Bombay Mahal, a local Indian restaurant, will be served in Sills Hall from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. and there will be another tea and snack break at about 3:00 p.m.

The discussion sessions will involve Faruqui, Anthropology Professor Sara Dickey, and Rachael Groner, Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies.