Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Film Center, New York University
South Asia Institute at Columbia
NYU Department of Anthropology; NYU Center for Media, Culture, and History; The New School India China Institute; Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Society of Fellows and the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and the Film Program of the School of the Arts
The World is Family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, 2023, 96 minutes)
Hindi and Marathi with English subtitles
Best Editing, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2023
Best Documentary Award, New York Indian film Festival, 2024
Audience Award, Indie Meme Festival, Austin, Texas, 2024
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, a Sanskrit phrase meaning “the world is family,” is a universalist idea that competes with dominant, exclusivist Hindu notions of caste. Anand grew up in a milieu that questioned the latter. The family’s elders had fought for India’s Independence but rarely spoken about it. ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ words enshrined in India’s Constitution, were subconsciously internalized.
As his parents aged, Anand began to film with whatever equipment was at hand. Soon, birthdays and family gatherings gave way to oral history. Revisiting home movie footage a decade after his parents had passed was a revelation. Today, self-confessed supremacists whose ideology once inspired the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, are in power. As they rewrite India’s history, memories of the past have become more precious than mere personal nostalgia. This film presents the history of the filmmaker’s family intertwined with the history of the Indian nation.
Speaker
Anand Patwardhan has been making political documentaries for over four decades pursuing diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Anand who successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court. Anand has been an activist ever since he was a student — having participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement; being a volunteer in Caesar Chavez’s United Farm Worker’s Union; working in Kishore Bharati, a rural development and education project in central India; and participating in the Bihar anti-corruption movement in 1974-75 and in the civil liberties and democratic rights movement during and after the 1975-77 Emergency. Since then he has been active in movements for housing rights of the urban poor, for communal harmony and participated in movements against unjust, unsustainable development, militarism and nuclear nationalism.
His documentaries have been honored with awards at film festivals worldwide, including Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel Japan, Nepal, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Singapore, Switzerland, U.K., and the U.S. His films include Reason (Vivek, 2018), Jai Bhim Comrade (2012); War and Peace (Jang aur Aman, 2002); Fishing: In the Sea of Greed (1998); A Narmada Diary (1995); Father, Son and Holy War (Pitra, Putra aur Dharmayuddha, 1995); Ram Ke Naam (In the Name of God, 1992); and others. Anand received a B.A. in English Literature from Bombay University in 1970, won a scholarship to get another B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1972, and earned a Master’s degree in Communications from McGill University in 1982.
