Jai Bhim Comrade is screening in the cinema for $15/$7 reduced (suggested donation in person) on Saturday 11/12 at 11am.

Jai Bhim Comrade

Anand Patwardhan, 2011, 169 min., India

Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, recently profiled by the New York Times, has been charting the rise of India's Hindu nationalism for four decades; on Saturday 11/12 he visits Maysles Cinema to present one of his most gripping and vital features.

For thousands of years India’s Dalits were abhorred as “untouchables,” denied education and treated as bonded labor. By 1923 Bhimrao Ambedkar broke the taboo, won doctorates abroad and fought for the emancipation of his people. He drafted India’s Constitution, led his followers to discard Hinduism for Buddhism. His legend still spreads through poetry and song. In 1997 a statue of Dr. Ambedkar in a Dalit colony in Mumbai was desecrated with footwear. As angry residents gathered, police opened fire killing 10. Vilas Ghogre, a leftist poet, hung himself in protest. Jai Bhim Comrade shot over 14 years, follows the poetry and music of people like Vilas and marks a subaltern tradition of reason that, from the days of the Buddha, has fought superstition and religious bigotry.

Followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Anand Patwardhan.