SAF + Deptford Cinema collaborate to screen ‘Red Ant Dream’
In December 2020/January 2021, the QMUL South Asia Forum collaborated with the South London-based Deptford Cinema to screen Sanjay Kak’s 2013 film on the life of revolutionary possibility in India, Red Ant Dream. Documenting contemporary struggles against the state, from Bastar to the Niyamgiri Hills to Punjab, the film is a gripping portrait of India’s twenty-first century. Though filmed in the early 2010s, the topic resonated powerfully with ongoing political struggles in 2020/21 India, when mass protests by farmers surrounded the capital in New Delhi, opposing government attempts to increase the power of private corporations in the agricultural industry, amongst other demands.
While the screenings finished in early January, several resources from the collaboration are still available online:
- Sanjay Kak joined Pragya Dhital (School of English and Drama, QMUL) and Chris Moffat (School of History, QMUL) for an episode of the Deptford Cinema podcast, which you can listen to by clicking here.
- On the Deptford Cinema Journal, a short essay by the artist and writer Shuddhabrata Sengupta, ‘Footage for a Film Without End’, reflects on the film and Sanjay Kak’s approach to the documentary form:
