Anam Abbas (Documentary Association Pakistan) speaks with Alok Adhikari (Film Southasia), Gayatri Nadya (Kolektif), documentary filmmaker Miriam Chandy Menacherry, Tareq Ahmed (Dhaka DocLab), and Sydelle Willow Smith (Sunshine Cinema).
An open discussion on strategies and action-oriented collaboration to build a South Asia focused distribution ecosystem. Following a landmark gathering at IDA’s getting real, this session is a focused discussion on holistic approaches to building digital audiences, regional institutional support, and community-centered participation models.
Anam Abbas is a Pakistani/Canadian filmmaker based in Pakistan, where she runs Other Memory Media. As a producer and Dp her first feature Showgirls of Pakistan, winner of the Best Pitch Award at the 2016 Hotdocs Forum, is scheduled to release in 2020. Her latest fiction short Saya, co-directed with Fawzia Mirza, was selected to play in competition at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2019. Anam’s first feature documentary as a director This Stained Dawn, which follows the feminist activists who organize the Women’s marches in Pakistanis, is currently in post production. Anam is also one of the founding members of the Documentary Association of Pakistan (DAP).
Alok Ahikari is the assistant director of Film Southasia, a biennial documentary festival that was started in 1997 in Kathmandu. Alok is also a freelance film and video editor who has previously worked with VICE Media in New York and The Record in Nepal and now runs Phoolbutta Production, a small production company based in Kathmandu.
Gayatri Nadya became involved with film exhibition and distribution in Indonesia in Kolektif, an initiative film distribution established in 2013. Kolektif works with the community, to develop and deliver activities including film screenings, discussions, workshops, community management and capacity building. She is also part of Kinosaurus, a micro cinema in Jakarta which was established in 2015 and runs the regular Arthouse cinema with fringe events including artist talks, filmmaking workshops and exhibitions. Since 2017, She is also one of the Motion Picture Ambassadors for Luang Prabang International Film Festival.
Miriam Chandy Menacherry is the Founder and Director at Filament Pictures, which she founded in 2005 with the aim to craft meaningful films from South Asia. She began her career as a reporter and then went on to direct programmes for BBC World and National Geographic Channel. Her last film Lyari Notes on music and resistance, co-directed and co-produced with Pakistan filmmaker Maheen Zia, had its world premiere at IDFA. Her film The Rat Race on the true life narratives of Mumbai’s rat killers won the Mipdoc Co Production Challenge at Cannes and awards at Florence and Kerala. Currently she is working on her new feature documentary From the Shadows, on child sex trafficking. Miriam has been developing a model of distribution that involves theatrical release, festival circuit, educational screenings as well as broadcast. She teamed up with PVR Cinemas to host workshops and screenings for 100 schools and underprivileged NGOs in Mumbai and hosted in association with the Film Federation of India the South Asian Women’s Film Festival. Miriam collaborated with other members of the filmmaking community to launch INDIDOC networking film clubs across India to host multiple screenings of a Bangladeshi Film on climate change. She believes the time has come to create innovative and self-sustaining distribution models in South Asia so that independent filmmakers can get their films to reach new audiences as well as generate revenue to continue making their own films.
Tareq Ahmed is working as Director of Dhaka DocLab, the South Asian Forum of Documentary filmmakers. Throughout his 25 year long career, he has also been involved in producing and directing television programs and documentaries, and has built an extensive knowledge of producing audio visual programmes for local and international development agencies. As a professional, Tareq has also led a media and communication organization for nearly a decade, which focused on grassroots media and media professionals. Besides, he was Artistic Director of International Short and Independent Film Festival in Bangladesh, the oldest festival of this category in South Asia.
Sydelle Willow Smith is a storyteller passionate about media advocacy working across Africa. Born in Johannesburg, she is currently based in Cape Town. Her love of photography developed at The Market Photo Workshop, which led to a deeper ethnographic enquiry in Visual Anthropology at The University of Cape Town, followed by a Master’s of Social Science in African Studies from The University of Oxford. Her academic research has focused on the politics of participatory visual research dynamics from an Applied Anthropology perspective. She is passionate about audience engagement and experimenting with modes of public participation. It is within the context of public participation where she has drawn together her interests in media, anthropology, and socio-political interventions. In 2017, Sydelle and her husband Rowan Pybus co-founded the solar powered mobile cinema non-profit network Sunshine Cinema. Sunshine Cinema celebrates the power of storytelling to inspire communities to drive social change through dialogue and action. They address youth unemployment through their Sunbox Ambassadorship program by training young people to be media facilitators equipping them with a mobile, solar cinema kit called ‘The Sunbox’. The Ambassadors mobilise their communities to spark conversation; promoting active citizenship inspired by the power of African Films.
