Project Dastaan is a homage to the legacy of the millions of refugees in the subcontinent who had their lives changed overnight. The project is generously supported by the CatachLight Foundation, Digital Catapult and Arts Council Englands’ CreativeXR Program and National Geographic Society Exploration Grant.
During Project Dastaan’s Pakistan tour, the content that will be screened includes a Virtual Reality (VR) film Child of Empire, and a 2D animated series Lost Migrations consisting of 3 short films about lesser known Partition stories. This award-winning film has been screened at Victoria and Albert Museum, SOAS University of London, and Sundance Film Festival: Asia and is now touring in South Asia.
3 Short Films (2D Animated Series) – LOST MIGRATIONS Lost Migrations is an anthology of three beautiful animations, each of about 6 to 8 minutes about a community that has been excluded from South Asian literature and historiography. It is the vision of Saadia Gardezi and Sam Dalrymple, animated and directed by Puffball Pakistan and Spitting Image India in a unique UK/India/Pakistan co-production. Lost Migrations tells the stories of three communities of 1947 whose voice has been lost to history, even in the subcontinent.View this post on Instagram
Episode 1: Sultana’s Dream It traverses through a series of dreamscapes, inspired by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain’s 1905 feminist magic-realism. It depicts the various experiences and traumas incurred by women during Partition. The episode begins with an elderly Bengali woman based in present-day Calcutta, and through flashbacks to her migration, explores themes of forced conversion, abuses, abduction, and others. Screenplay by Saadia Gardezi, directed by Spitting Image India and generously financed by National Geographic Society. Episode 2: Seabirds It depicts the ripples of Partition far from the subcontinent’s borderlands, to its wider impact on the Chettiar Tamil diaspora, who were forced overnight to choose between their ancestral land of India, and countries in South-East Asia, where they had lived for generations. All told through a culinary conversation between a grandmother and her grandchild. Directed by Sawera Jahan, screenplay by Omi Zola Gupta and financed by British Council Arts. Episode 3: Rest in Paper It recounts the dark comedy of Ghulam Ali, who is an Indian citizen, but finds himself in Pakistan when the border is drawn in 1947. Thus begins a chain of arrests and paperwork, that see him cross the border a dozen times, and eventually abandoned in the no-mans land between the two countries. Kafka in 1947! Screenplay by Saadia Gardezi, directed by Haseeb Rehmaan and financed by British Council Arts. The screening of Lost Migrations is currently hosted by Citizens Archive Pakistan on Friday, 16th December 2022 at Media Studio, Campus 154, SZABIST, Karachi. The screening will be followed by an interactive Q&A session with Sparsh Ahuja, Co-Founder Project Dastaan and Saqlain Zaidi, Assistant Professor, SZABIST. The discussion will be moderated by Aaliyah Tayyebi, Head of Research and Digital Archiving at CAP.View this post on Instagram
