Singing Pictures - PREVIEW

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/singing-pictures.html For generations, Patua (Chitrakar) communities of West Bengal, India have been painters and singers of stories depicted in scrolls. The Patuas tell the stories of Muslim saints (pirs and fakirs) as well as Hindu Gods and Goddesses, and offer devotion to saints at Muslim shrines. In the past they used to wander from village to village, receiving rice, vegetables and coins for their recital. They would unroll a scroll, a frame at a time, and sing their own compositions. But competition from other media eroded this way of life and now the Patuas are trying to adapt to changing conditions.

In response to this cultural crisis and as a means to make extra money, recently a group of women from Naya village near Calcutta formed a scroll painters' collaborative. The women candidly discuss issues of Islam and birth control, victimization of women, female education, poverty and work, religious tolerance and intolerance, and depict some of these ideas in the scrolls themselves. Women painters want to tell their own stories in songs and pictures, illustrating their lives of hardship and endurance. These stories attest to what it means to be a woman in Bengal and India today, demonstrating how a small group of determined women can empower themselves by adapting an ancient art to new conditions.

a film by Lina Fruzzetti, Ákos Östör, Aditi Nath Sarkar
distributed by Documentary Educational Resources

Category:

Education

Tags:

• India
• Calcutta
• Bengal
• Patua
• Muslim
• Hindu
• painting
• scroll
• women
• religion
• documentary
• anthropology
• film

[3090558]

Very nice.

Thank you