Description | As part of 13th Tasveer South Asian Film Festival, IAS Faculty Member, Alka Kurian hosts the following symposium in UWB on October 5th: Freedom of Expression and Documentary Filmmaking in South Asia This symposium will explore the role played by filmmakers in South Asia at a time when freedom of expression in the region – constitutionally guaranteed as a fundamental right – in increasingly threatened by a plethora of state and non-state actors. Over the past two decades, a growing number of artists have been exiled or killed, books and films banned, vigilante mobocracy encouraged, press manipulated, the Internet throttled, minority people lynched, and women’s freedom severally curtailed. Given the increasing intersection of our lives by social media, people of different ideological or religious persuasions terrorize dissenting voices, right wing ideologues get offended and the state regards them as seditious and anti-national. As a result, journalists, students, professors, bloggers and human rights activists are threatened, arrested, shot or hacked to death. At a time like this, what role do filmmakers play to be ensure their right to free speech? While filmmaking as a form of art is protected by article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, can filmmakers in South Asia exercise this right freely? And if so, what strategies can they adopt in exposing rights violations in the region? Further, is free speech fundamental or absolutist? Should there be regulation on free speech? A roundtable of filmmakers, academics and members of the community come together in this symposium to deliberate on these issues. More details on: https://tsaff.tasveer.org/2018/10-05-10am/ |
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