The film stars


Kasturi Basu, Purba Rudra and Dwaipayan Banerjee screen documentaries across rural and suburban Bengal

Amid buses, honking cars, tinkling cycle bells and the smell of food from roadside stalls comes the sporadic rat-ta-tat-tat of machine-gun fire. People crane their necks out of bus windows; a couple of policemen keep watch; passers-by returning home from office join an audience gripped by the scenes unfolding on the street-corner film screen.

The images on the makeshift screen are hazy because of the reflection of adjacent street and shop lights but the issue of state repression comes through clearly as Haobam Paban Kumar’s much discussed documentary, AFSPA, 1958 plays on the screen. Named after the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act which gave security forces sweeping authority in Manipur in 1958, Kumar’s film follows the vortex of violence that engulfed the state after the rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama in 2004 by security force men.

Timed to the day when arrested Manipuri human rights activist Irom Sharmila completed 15 years of a hunger-strike, the public screening resonated with the audience.................Read more

 

Source: livemint


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