Kriti Film Club announces three-day film festival on 75 years of Partition

Delhi-based Kriti Film Club has announced a three-day film festival on 75 years of Partition. Titled ‘Speaking in Forgotten Tongues: Films and Conversations on 75 years of Partition’, the event will be held at the India Habitat Centre from 23-25 August in New Delhi.

A note shared by the festival on the screenings reads, “Much has been spoken about the Partition and yet not enough. It remains a hyper-reactive event seemingly in the past, yet consistently present. Shadowing our politics, our laws, our morality and our futures. Seventy-five years is perhaps the outer limits of average human life expectancy."

It continues, "In a way then, 75 years of India's emergence as a sovereign nation, marks the outer limits of its first citizens. As we begin to lose to time those who experienced the Partition and survived, we invite you to join us in exploring the limits of this remembering and forgetting of the Partition, and its meanings in the present moment. To challenge plastic political wills and reclaim it for us, the people who lived, loved and lost through it.” 

The three films being screened are Taangh by Bani Singh, Ruuposh by Mohd. Fehmeed and Zeeshan Amir Khan, and Iqraar-Naama by Priyanka Chhabra. The films dwell on longing, home and homeland, and concealed memories, while opening up questions to our collective past and different ways of remembering and re-writing it. 

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In addition to the screenings, a panel discussion on the theme ‘Memory and Longing @75’ will also be organised. The closing remarks to the three-day event will be helmed by filmmaker and historian Uma Chakravarti and Kriti Film Club founder Aanchal Kapur.