A TIME TO RISE and BOMBAY OUR CITY - special bonus screening!

As an added treat to this year's roster of films, we have a very special guest arriving in Montreal to show two of his best works - A TIME TO RISE and BOMBAY OUR CITY. Acclaimed Indian filmmaker Anand Patwardhan will be at the screenings for a discussion after. Join us in revisiting two of Patwardhan's classic award-winning films from the 1980s.

A TIME TO RISE

On April 6, 1980, the Canadian Farmworkers Union came into existence. This film documents the conditions among Chinese and East Indian immigrant workers in British Columbia that provoked the formation of the union, and the response of growers and labor contractors to the threat of unionization. Made over a period of two years, the film is eloquent testimony to the progress of the workers' movement from the first stirrings of militancy to the energetic canvassing of union members.

Canada / 1981 / colour / 40 mins

Awards

Silver Dove, Leipzig International Film Festival
Grand Prize, Tyneside International Festival, UK

Reviews

"A stirring documentary that left me fascinated by the dignity and passion with which farm labourers are facing down fear and violence to form a union…"
Michelle Landsberg - Toronto Star

"The film makes the farmworker’s union fight for recognition into a tough but exhilarating drama... the film never lapses into rhetoric but is carried along by well paced action."
Doug Ward - The Vancouver Sun

"This forty minute documentary is among the rare militant Canadian made films in which the relationships between thre struggles of the farmworkers throughout North America are made explicit."
Luc Perreault - La Presse, Montreal

Credits

Production, Direction - Anand Patwardhan, Jim Monro
Camera - Martin Duckworth, Kirk Tougas
Sound - Nettie Wild
Editing - Anand Patwardhan

BOMBAY OUR CITY

BOMBAY: OUR CITY tells the story of the daily battle for survival of the 4 million slum dwellers of Bombay who make up half the city's population. Although they are Bombay's workforce - industrial laborers, construction workers, domestic servants - they are denied city utilities like electricity, sanitation, and water. Many slumdwellers must also face the constant threat of eviction as city
authorities carry out campaigns to "beautify" Bombay.

BOMBAY: OUR CITY is an indictment of injustice and misery, and a call to action on he side of the slumdwellers.

India / 1985 / Colour / 60 mins

Awards

Best Non-Fiction
National Award, India, 1986

Slumdweller to receive award
for 'Bombay Our City'
Press release, 1986

Special Jury Award
Cinema du Reel, Paris, 1986

Filmfare Award
Best Documentary, India, 1986

Reviews

"This writer considers it perhaps Patwardhan's most mature and hard hitting film which exposes not only the ugly face of Bombay but the hypocrisy of some of its top authorities as well as the unbroken spirit of its slumdwellers."
Amita Malik - Statesman

"Simply one of the best documentaries I have ever seen."
Sean Cubitt, City Limits, London, UK

"Quite clearly, BOMBAY: OUR CITY is the best documentary ever made in India."
Khalid Mohamed - The Times of India

"Patwardhan gives us this story simply and clearly, with restrained passion, and it becomes, finally, appalling and moving."
Michael Wilmington - The Los Angeles Times

"A member of the U.P.M.C. (Upper Middle Class) with guilt becomes a sentimental socialist. A sentimental socialist with an excess of guilt, becomes a proto-Marxist and is dangerous. A sentimental socialist with talent becomes excessively dangerous. Anand Patwardhan's film on demolition of slums in Bombay 'Hamara Shaher' showed and discussed at the British Council on 3rd July '85 can perhaps best be understood against this background."
Shankar Menon - Financial Express

"Anand Patwardhan's HAMARA SHAHER about the unauthorized hutments demolitions in Bombay during these last few years, was the best viewing not only of last week but of this year -- and that includes feature films. The approach is multi-faceted and analytical. The case against demolitions comes out of the mouth of its staunchest supporters -- vigilance groups, municipal officials, police officials leading industrialists, advertizing clubs and highrise apartments' ladies clubs .... (The logic of the situation is driving the demolition supporters to Fascist attitudes.) I have often heard such talk at cocktail parties but never has the ruling class been caught with its pants down on film."
Iqbal Masud - Indian Express

"Does Patwardhan honestly feel that he is giving the "privileged" class a fair hearing, or is fairness not the purpose of the film? Whereas I had gone to see the film with an open mind ready to sympathize with the problems and tragedy of hutment dwellers, I suddenly found myself on the defensive -- or perhaps that was the intention of the director."
Meenakshi Raja - The Afternoon

Credits

Camera: Ranjan Palit, Anand Patwardhan, Pervez Merwanji
Sound: Indrajit Neogy
Editing: Anand Patwardhan
Production, Editing Assistance: Ramesh Asher, Sanjiv Shah

Patwardhan's Official Site