The International Premiere of War and Peace (Jung Aur Aman)
The International Premiere of War and Peace (Jung Aur Aman)
Friday, November 9, 200112:00 AM - 6:30 PM (Pacific)
Anand Patwardhan's latest film, a work in progress (180 min.), shot in India, Pakistan, and Japan
The director will be present for discussion after the screening.
Starting with the outbreak of jingoism that marked the 1998 series of nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, Patwardhan creates a road movie that vivifies the human and historical realities of this new leap in the world's nuclearization. We visit test sites with politicians, watch urban sound-and-light spectacles glorifying the military, hear the stories of suffering villagers near the test site, travel with peace marchers who confront furious pro-bomb crowds, join a conference of Indian and Pakistani peace activists, and go to Japan to hear testimony from survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks. In the style that has distinguished his earlier films, Patwardhan brilliantly captures individual voices, gestures, facial expressions, and public dramas that simultaneously reveal intimate human experience and the sweep of history.
India's most controversial and renowned documentary producer, Patwardhan has won numerous Indian and international prizes during his career as a filmmaker, which spans more than a quarter of a century. While his films cover a wide variety of subjects, regions, and social groups, his central interests have been human rights, communalism, and violence.
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