18th Madurai Film Festival 2016
Stalin K – Retrospective
Stalin K. is a media and human rights activist, with 24 years experience pioneering new models of community media. He is a teacher, trainer and an internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker. He is one of India’s leading exponent of community radio, campaign design and community video.
He currently leads Video Volunteers, an international organization dedicated to empowering community voices by setting up media projects around the world.
Stalin has made over a dozen documentaries and has received several national and international awards.
Films by Stalin K
INDIA UNTOUCHED-Stories of a People Apart
108 minutes | Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi with English subtitles| 2008
This film is perhaps the most comprehensive look at Untouchability ever undertaken on film. Spanning eight states and four religions, this film will make it impossible for anyone to deny that Untouchability continues to be practiced in India. The film introduces leading Benares scholars who interpret Hindu scriptures to mean that Dalits ‘have no right’ to education, and Rajput farmers who proudly proclaim that no Dalit may sit in their presence, and that the police must seek their permission before pursuing cases of atrocities.
Our Water, Our Future |58 minutes | English | 2005
This film was made with the Northern Arapaho and the Eastern Shoshone tribes of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, US. Since water is more expensive than gas, it has become one of the most pressing issues in the American West. These two Tribes have one of the most extensive and valuable water rights in the US, yet many of them lack running water in their homes. In this film, 100 Voices from the Reservation explore why the Tribes have been unable to exercise their rights. In the process, they educate their fellow Tribal members about government injustice, reflect on Tribal responsibility and make a compelling call to action.
Gujarat - A work in progress
35 minutes | Gujarati, Hindi with English Subtitles | 2002
This film reconstructs, through interviews with survivors, the systematic carnage unleashed on the minorities in Gujarat in 2002. The film was put together for submission to the National Human Rights Commission when it first visited Gujarat in the third week of March 2002. Shooting started on the very first days of the riots and includes footage nowhere else captured. The 100 hours of footage was submitted to the inquiry commissions and the activists have used it in their court case against the government officials in Gujarat who are believed to have been in connivance in the continuance of the violence.
Lesser Humans 59 minutes | Gujarati with English subtitles | 1996
This film helped to put the issue of Untouchability on the agenda for numerous international development agencies. It investigates the lives of ‘manual scavengers,’ the community at the lowest rung of the caste system whose inhuman caste-based occupation is to manually dispose of human excreta.
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