Film Screening with director Anand Patwardhan: “The World is Family”
Film Screening with director Anand Patwardhan
“The World is Family” (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, 2023, 96 minutes)
Hindi and Marathi with English subtitles
Best Editing, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2023
Best Documentary Award, New York Indian film Festival, 2024
“A vivid evocation of 100 years of history in less than 100 minutes of cinema. An intimate act of family portraiture whose spirited subjects are lovingly painted with humor and deep humanity. A facility with scale whose fluidity in form beautifully reflects the flow of life, death, and history.” IDFA Citation, 2023
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, a Sanskrit phrase meaning “the world is family” is a universalist idea that competes with dominant, exclusivist Hindu notions of caste. Anand grew up in a milieu that questioned the latter. The family’s elders had fought for India’s Independence but rarely spoken about it. ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, words enshrined in India’s Constitution, were subconsciously internalized.
As his parents aged, Anand began to film with whatever equipment was at hand. Soon birthdays and family gatherings gave way to oral history. Revisiting home movie footage a decade after his parents had passed, was a revelation. Today self-confessed supremacists whose ideology once inspired the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, are in power. As they rewrite India’s history, memories of the past have become more precious than mere personal nostalgia.
Time: 6:00pm – 8:30pm
Location: Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, New York University, 36 East Eighth Street (between University Place and Greene Street)
REGISTRATION REQUIRED. PHOTO ID NEEDED TO ENTER VENUE.
Organized by the South Asia Institute at Columbia
Co-sponsored at NYU by the Department of Anthropology; and the Center for Media, Culture, and History; and at Columbia by the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Society of Fellows and the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and the Film Program of the School of the Arts; and at the New School, the India China Institute
Anand Patwardhan has been making political documentaries for over four decades pursuing diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Anand who successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court.
His documentaries have been honored with awards at film festivals around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel Japan, Nepal, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Singapore, Switzerland, U.K., and the U.S. His films include Reason (Vivek, 2018), Jai Bhim Comrade (2012); War and Peace (Jang aur Aman, 2002); Fishing: In the Sea of Greed (1998); A Narmada Diary (1995); Father, Son and Holy War (Pitra, Putra aur Dharmayuddha, 1995); Ram Ke Naam (In the Name of God, 1992); and others. Anand received a B.A. in English Literature from Bombay University in 1970, won a scholarship to get another B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1972 and earned a Master’s degree in Communications from McGill University in 1982.
