Bangalore Film Society

As part of our celebrations for International Women’s day in the month of March we are happy to invite you to the screening of the film This Stained Dawn that will be followed by a panel discussion on the relevance of feminist activism across borders and boundaries.

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This Stained Dawn, a 90 minute documentary from Pakistan made by Annam Abbas, powerfully captures the way in which Karachi's feminists organise a women's march, coming up against Pakistan's radical religious right, while negotiating a deeply surveilled, paranoia-inducing, and often physically violent space in the hopes of a revolution.

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The film will find echo in almost all countries today that are dealing with resurgent right wing moralities and ideologies that are legitimizing the worst forms of patriarchy and misogyny which impact not only women but all those who get constituted as the “other” by those in power -  be they religious or gender minorities, refugees, Dalits, Blacks, Hispanics, Palestinians or very simply the poor. A film like this also raises questions about the relevance of feminist activism in today’s increasingly polarized global context.

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For feminism in fact provides a broader prism to understand these diverse forms of “othering” in deeply interconnected ways. Which is why the struggle of the feminists in Pakistan against their radical religious right does not seem so very different from that of the feminists in India against our own radical and majoritarian right.

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Feminism also underpins an activism that is rooted in the dailiness of our struggles which starts from within oneself, our homes, our personal relationships and gets extended to the community and political structures. The many borders and boundaries that women need to constantly transcend and trespass. And therefore, signifies also an activism that cannot inherently “other” even the oppressor who you might well be living with. What then are the modes of resistance against the “other” who is an extension of your own self; where the struggle is as much personal as it is political; as much local as it is global.

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These questions provide the context for the conversation that will follow the screening of the film that itself unveils these different layers of oppression, resistance and resilience.

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The conversation will be held between “activists” from diverse fields – media, theatre and culture and gender/human rights. Each one would reflect on what would constitute feminist activism for them in the context of their own chosen fields of engagement as also the local, national or global landscape they are located in or connected with.