Uma Chakravarty

Story of the unexpected imprisonment of a number of women, for their resistance to the Emergency of 1975-77, through the life of Socialist and famous actor Snehalata Reddy. Being the only woman political prisoner in jail, she spent eight months in solitary confinement, recording her concerns and traumatic experiences in her diary, extracts of which were later published. Released for a few weeks on parole, she died of a heart attack just before she was to return to jail. The film recounts her ordeal through the reminiscences of her children and close friends.

The film, “Zameer” (The Voice of Conscience), is built around the experiences of women who were drawn into movements of resistance as they have unfolded in India since the new millennium and were jailed for their participation in movements defending lands, livelihoods and ways of living that were being eroded since the turn of the millennium. As lands, forests and sea coasts are turned into battlegrounds for “development” women are drawn into movements to defend their right to their homelands, their own histories and their own understanding of an organic way of being. Jailed for their activities women experience violence from the prison system but they also find solidarities and deep friendships created and sustained in the time of incarceration which become life-long bonds.

The film is about an unknown woman, Subbalakshmi who lived between the salt pans and thousands of other places in her mind and left behind a trunk, a diary and scraps of paper. She had participated like many others in the movement for independence in the 1920's and 30's but was forced by circumstances to withdraw from active participation. It is a film about the choices women are denied but who struggle to find other ways of expressing their resistance.

A documentary set in Firanghi Mahal, an institution for rationalist Islamic scholarship founded in the late 17th century. Through two women, Sughra Fatema and her niece Khadija Ansari, it tells the unknown stories of women and their struggles to find their own ways of being in a time of dramatic changes. One wrote poetry to express herself and the other became a student activist who went to jail for being a revolutionary.

The Film locates the life and work of a woman political activist in her everyday existence, the relationships she lives out at home and in her work and the political affiliations she tries to hold together, even as they are subjected to multiple stresses.

Ye Lo Bayaan Humare is a film about the idealism, passion and the jail time of young women coming of age in the late 1960s, seeking to change the world, throwing themselves into movements sweeping parts of India.