IN CINEMA
Saturday, May 9th at 6:30PM
PROJECT DASTAAN
SULTANA’S DREAM | SEABIRDS | REST IN PAPER
SULTANA’S DREAM
Isabel Herguera, 2023, 12 min
Taking her inspiration from a feminist sci-fi short story written in Bengal in 1905, Inés sets out on a voyage of discovery around India in search of Ladyland, the Utopian land of women.
SEABIRDS
Sawera Jahan, 7 min
Over an intimate conversation whilst cooking with her grandmother, eight year-old Nithya learns of the tie between heritage and food and how new borders cut her Chettiar family off from their childhood home.
REST IN PAPER
Haseeb ur Rehman, 7 min
Ghulam Ali is an Indian citizen who found himself stateless in 1947. Lacking the correct paperwork, he gets caught in a chain of arrests and deportation, crossing the border many times and eventually loses his sense of belonging and identity.
Project Dastaan is proud to announce its first-ever U.S. tour, showcasing its award-winning VR documentary Child of Empire and the critically acclaimed three-part animated series Lost Migrations. The tour will feature screenings and discussions at leading institutions, including the Smithsonian, the Asian Art Museum, and Yale University, with support from the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program.
Project Dastaan (“story” in Urdu and Hindi) is a digital humanities initiative that uses VR to reconnect Partition survivors with their ancestral homes. Its work has been featured in The New Yorker, TIME, National Geographic, BBC, NPR, and Reuters and has been included in the British History Curriculum and National Archives. The initiative has also been presented at Sundance New Frontiers, MIT Open Doc Lab (Double Exposure Symposium), and the World Archaeology Summit in Saudi Arabia.
Dastaan is set to embark on its first-ever U.S. tour, showcasing its groundbreaking VR film Child of Empire and three-part animated series Lost Migrations. Through colorfully animated retellings of individual histories, these films reveal the resilience of those who were uprooted and dispersed as a result of the events of 1947. They emphasize the power of letters, food, and other shared experiences to foster reunion and healing in the wake of the largest migration in recorded history.
Child of Empire is an animated VR docu-drama that places audiences at the heart of Partition’s lived experience. The film has received international recognition, including the XR History Award, a Webby Award nomination for Best VR Experience, and official selections at Sundance (World Premiere, 2022), Sheffield DocFest, Melbourne International Film Festival, and Atlanta Film Festival.
Lost Migrations, produced in collaboration with Puffball Studios and Spitting Image Bangalore, is a three-part animated series exploring the often-overlooked legacies of Partition—focusing on the personal narratives of women, the stateless, and displaced diaspora communities. The series is currently streaming on MUBI India and NOWNESS Asia and was funded by the British Council and National Geographic Society.
+ Post-screening discussion TBA!
$15 General Admission / $7 Reduced Price
