At a time when the public is bombarded with images of violence from around the world, the screening of a documentary entitled War and Peace about the Indian-Pakistani nuclear brings a fresh look at a distressing conflict.
Tuesday evening, roughly 60 community members and students gathered to watch and discuss the three-hour 2001 Indian film in Stiteler Hall.
"Jang aur Aman" -- or War and Peace -- shows "how the discussion of nuclear is connected with... people's understanding of themselves and of others," said Penn State English Professor Amitava Kumar, who led a discussion following the documentary's viewing.
Suggesting throughout his documentary that relations among individuals that have the power to both perpetuate and transgress violence, filmmaker Anand Patwardhan narrated during the film that "the friendship between Pakistanis and Indians [has become] the silver lining in the mushroom cloud."
Although the film focuses on the Indian-Pakistani nuclear conflict, "This issue can't be unrelated to wider geopolitical issues... like what's been happening in the U.S." since Sept. 11, asserted Ritty Lukose, who organized the event and is a faculty member at Penn's Graduate School of Education.
The filmmaker interviews those who both support and protest India's nuclear policy, but his message is clearly anti-nuclear and pro-peace. As one Indian villager mused, "One who loves life itself loves everything in it."
Audience members agreed with Philadelphia resident Shampa Chatterjee that the filmmaker portrays "ordinary people" as more "rational" than those in political power.
Added Nanbendu Pore, another Philadelphia resident, "People in the two countries don't believe that they are elite. But political power is different than ordinary people."
Mytili Jagannathan of the Asian Arts Initiative, a Philadelphia community organization that promotes Asian-American art, was "moved" by the film. Believing that the film "could make people think," she said she wishes she could buy a copy of it to show to her hometown in West Virginia.
The screening was sponsored by the South Asia Regional Studies Department and co-sponsored by the Women's Studies Program and the Philadelphia Asian Arts Initiative. A discussion led by Kumar followed the screening.
The 60-person audience was mostly composed of persons of South Asian descent. People came from as far away as Delaware County to attend the event, which was advertised in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Patwardhan has been making controversial political documentaries for nearly three decades. Many of his films were banned at one time or another in India.
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