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TAMBAKU CHAAKILA OOB ALI / TOBACCO EMBERS
India · 1982 · 26'00
TAMBAKU CHAAKILA OOB ALI documents, re-enacts, and takes forward one of the largest movements of unorganized labor of its time and context, which sparked unionizing processes across India throughout the 1980s. In the spirit of mobilizing for
the leftist labor and the women’s movements the Yugantar collective spent four months with female tobacco factory workers in Nipani, Karnataka in India, listening to their accounts of exploitative working conditions, discussing strategies for
unionizing and steps to broaden solidarities for strike actions, and filming previously unseen circumstances inside the factories. The team followed the workers’ leads as to what, where, and how their actions should be recorded, and developed a
loose script through the workers’ narratives. Yugantar’s commitment to the complexity of political friendships and how to ‘stand with’ provoked a then pioneering collaborative filmmaking practice embodied in large scale reenactments, a
voice-over as pluriverse testimony, and the production of the first screen presence of working-class women ‘speaking to power’.
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02
SUDESHA
India · 1983 · 33'00
Sudesha tells the story of a woman living in a village in the lower Himalayas. In this area, people depend entirely on the forest for their daily needs of firewood, food and water. But the forests have been destroyed by powerful timber traders.
And along with the forest, the livelihood of the people has been greatly altered. The women of this region played an active role in the "Chipko Movement." Sudesha was imprisoned for her protest.
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Yugantar was founded by Deepa Dhanraj, Abha Bhaiya, Navroze Contractor, and Meera Rao in 1980. Between 1980 and 1983, during a time of radical political transformation in India, Yugantar created four pioneering
films together with existing or ensuing women’s groups.
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