Anand Patwardhan's Statement on the Tragedy in Mumbai
Award-winning Indian filmmaker Anand Patwardhan released a statement on the recent terror attacks in Mumbai.
Patwardhan has been making political documentaries for nearly three decades. He has relentlessly pursued diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India.
Read the statement here.
Learn more about Anand Patwardhan's films here.Labels: history, India, politics, terrorism
Calls for Burial of Lenin's Body
Yahoo! News reports that a referendum is being called for to determine whether the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin, housed in a mausoleum in Red Square for more than 80 years, should be removed and buried. Since the fall of the Soviet government, top officials such as Vladimir Putin have been calling for consideration of whether the shrine to the Bolshevik revolutionary is appropriate.
FOREVER LENIN focuses on the reasons behind and the process of embalming Lenin as well as the maintenance required for the body and budgetary problems plaguing it today. Labels: history, Putin, Russia
The Hottentot Venus Revisited
Sara Baartman, also known as "The Hottentot Venus," was a young Khoi Khoi woman taken from her home in
South Africa to be crudely prodded and exhibited as a sideshow attraction in
Britain in the early 1800's. Her life is the subject of a new book, "African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus" by Rachel Holmes just released by Random House. Caroline Elkins, the Hugo K. Foster associate professor of African studies at Harvard, reviewed the book in this Sunday's
New York Times noting, "The story of Saartjie Baartman ? the Hottentot Venus?s real name ? is inherently fascinating, and littered with a diverse cast of highly unlikable characters."
Learn more about Baartman in Zola Maseko's multiple award-winning doc,
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SARA BAARTMAN. Called "telling and quite powerful" by the American Historical Review, the film explores Baartman's life and the legacy of racism and sexism her exploitation represented, which lived on for over a century after her death. And following up the first film, Maseko returned to Baartman?s story when French senator Nicolas About introduced a law to repatriate Baartman?s remains to
South Africa chronicled in
THE RETURN OF SARA BAARTMAN.
Labels: Baartman, history, Hottentot Venus, South Africa, women's issues
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