Screening : Remembering Kurdi

Saumyananda Sahi, the director will present his 64-minute documentary film, ‘Remembering Kurdi’, produced by the Films Division of India.

The film tries to piece together fractured memories of a village that was submerged by the Salaulim Dam over three decades ago, but which resurfaces annually for a few weeks during the summer – allowing its prior inhabitants to return to perform rituals, visit the graves of their ancestors, have picnics in the ruins of their homes, and remember what is lost.

In chronicling the continuing importance of the places of our past, and in observing how people return even after being rehabilitated elsewhere, the film reflects on how memory is such an integral part of our sense of belonging, and how land can mean so much more than an entity to be bought and sold, or to be abandoned in the name of development.