SOCIETY FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH (SSR)
In collaboration with Kaveri Hostel, JNU
Invites you to a screening of a film in
Kui (a tribal language) & Oriya
(with English sub-titles)
Wira Pdika
(or, MATIRO PUKO, COMPANY LOKO)
(Earth Worm, Company Man)
Directed by Samarendra Das and Amarendra Das

Where ?                                                                                      When ?

Kaveri Hostel Mess, JNU                                   3 p.m. on 17^th April 2007 (Tuesday)

            The screening will be followed by a discussion with Felix Padel (an anthropologist who specialises in studying power structures, and the author of ‘The Sacrifice of Human Being: British Rule and the Konds of Orissa’) and Samarendra Das (co-director of the film, and an investigative journalist and writer, author of three books in Oriya). They have co-authored ‘Anthropology of a Genocide: Tribal Movements against Over-Industrialisation in Central India.’

A documentary made with and for the indigenous people of Orissa, whose speech, song, dance, demonstration and gesture comes alive here in a way that is only possible because the film-maker and the camera have entered this indigenous world, and surrendered to the intention of serving them, becoming a medium for their expression… Basically the film interweaves a number of separate stories around resistance to mining and metal factory projects, and the big dams which supply them with hydro-power and water.

What Adivasis and Dalits actually say is rarely heard in the media. In this film, as in their daily life, they speak with a clarity and vividness that pulls blinkers off our eyes, and brings us back to a reality grounded firmly in nature… Orissa’s Adivasis have much to teach us, and though it exposes the tremendous injustice and hardship they face from the mining/metals industry, this is also a film of tremendous hope and possibility. This is a people’s movement facing huge odds, and it’s not going to disappear. We in the civilized world may be complacent or cynical about what’s happening to the environment. Here are people prepared to take a stand. 

As a villager sings in a famous movement song,

“Don’t you see the danger?

What we are facing today

You will face tomorrow

You are not immune…”