On Wednesday May 23rd, New Yorkers have the unprecedented opportunity to see what amounts to India’s “Battle of Algiers”. Bedabrata Pain’s “Chittagong” has been selected as the opening night feature of the 2012 New York Indian Film Festival shown simultaneously in 3 theaters (for location, click here). Like Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece, this is political film at its most magnificent.
One could easily imagine that Pain might have made the film without ever having seen “The Battle of Algiers”. The parallels are not so much a function of imitation but a faithful rendering of Indian history—the story of a heroic but ultimately doomed armed struggle in colonial India that lasted 4 days in 1930 and that evokes the fitful ups and downs of resistance to French colonialism in Algeria. Along with his wife and screenwriting partner Shenali Bose, the director of “Amu”, they are operating in the spirit of Howard Zinn. “Amu”, a 2007 masterpiece about Sikh oppression, and “Chittagong” are two chapters in what might be titled the film version of “A People’s History of India”. And, as is the case with Zinn, their work is clearly intended to win people to the side of social justice by telling the truth. full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/chittagong-2/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
