with panel including
IC Professor Naeem Inayatullah, Politics; IC Professor Tom Shevory,
Politics; and Harvey Young, Cornell University
In the industrial landscape of rural India, the local
factory pollutes the water, air and land with impunity. From
this landscape, an eight-year-old boy struggles with the death
of his father, a political and environmental activist who died
fighting the State's dubious politics of development. Through
memories of his father's stories, the boy's desires and hopes
are displaced onto the mystical presence of a mermaid in a carnival.
He begins a plan to take the fictional mermaid away from her
sad life at the carnival and from the polluted river he believes
is her home. As the real world of oppression and environmental
degradation becomes fused with this fantasy world of carnival
characters and mermaids, the boy begins to move toward a fuller,
yet unattainable, realization of his father's dream. Directed
by T.K. Rajeev Kumar. 1999, India, 73 min.
Cosponsored with the Department of Cinema and Photography;
Cinema on the Edge; and the Environmental Studies Program, Ithaca
College.
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