Amu - The Film - 1984

[Akaali]

Amu opens across Canada, starting on Februaru 16 in TORONTO. The US release is set for April.

This independant feature film needs YOUR SUPPORT. We need you to make the opening weekend a success.

Check out the trailer and more at www.amuthefilm.com and please spread the word.

EMPIRE SQUARE ONE (Mississauga)

CINEPLEX CARLTON (Downtown)

AMC Kennedy Commons (Scarborough)

Empire Empress Walk (North York)

Please see the poster for premiers around the world.

[Akaali]

Shonali Bose - Why I made Amu

I was a 19 year-old student in Delhi when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated at the end of October 1984. In the days and nights that followed, thousands of Sikhs were massacred. The city burned. Like many other people, I worked in the relief camps, transcribing postcards from widows to their relatives, writing down their stories of the horrors that had taken place. It was unforgettable.

In 1987, due to a personal tragedy, I left India and came to America as a graduate student. There I got involved with an Indian organization, spearheaded by my future husband, that organized around the issues of the denial of rights. The state terrorism unleashed in 1984 was a subject we particularly felt strongly about and kept alive. Because “1984” was a watershed in the Indian polity.

Many years later, after graduating from film school when I was ready to write my first feature film we knew that this was the story I had to write, the film I had to make and show, to a world that didn’t know the suppressed history of that genocide.

Working as an activist outside my home country one of the issues I became acutely aware of was the painful questions of identity that affect second-generation youth: their yearning to be accepted both here and there, to know their history, to place themselves. Kaju, my protagonist, was created out of my empathy with young people facing this poignant crisis.

By the final draft of the screenplay much more had happened. India and the world had gone through Godhra, Gujarat, 9-11, Afghanistan, Iraq -- and I wanted to incorporate it all. In finalizing the shooting script, though, I had to whittle away many side plots. That’s why I am glad that Penguin approached me to convert the screenplay into a novel and I could put into the book the thoughts, events and complexities that the 100-minute film had to sacrifice.

Amu was born because of the collaboration of many people. She is the child of a collective. Perhaps that was the biggest learning experience for me, since I came from the trenches of documentary filmmaking, where I shot, interviewed, edited, and was more or less the entire crew! To then lead a team of nearly a hundred people, with all their personalities and opinions, and to make sure the vision was one… I think more than film school, my training came from mothering two boys!

When I first came up with the idea for Amu, our older son had just started kindergarten. As the film is finally ready for release, he is in fifth grade! It’s been a long, hard, eye-opening battle to raise the money and get the film made. A battle I could never have fought without my husband, who is also the executive producer of the film. Amu has been our most difficult child together. We would have given up long ago if it weren’t for the pain of Shanno Kaur and her many sisters, a pain that is very much alive today, since not a single perpetrator has been punished twenty years later.

I can still hear the angry voices from the relief camp echoing across the years: “Minister hee to thhe. Unhee ke shaye pe sab hua” (It was a Minister. It was all done at his direction). “Saare shamil thhe… police, afsar, sarkar, neta, saare” (They were all involved … the police, the bureaucracy, the government, the politicians – all). If I ever had doubts that a cover-up of history had taken place, they were set to rest when the Censor Board removed these two lines of dialogue along with other politically motivated cuts and gave the film an “A” certificate, because “why bring up a history which is best buried and forgotten?” I accepted the cuts and thought it an even more powerful indictment for audiences to see the widows silently moving their lips. Silenced, even after twenty years…

My only hope for Amu is that she make us think.

[hps62]

“why bring up a history which is best buried and forgotten?” Shonali Bose - Why I made Amu " quote "

This is a wrong statement about Sikhs.

Sikhs never forget ! Never ! Never! ) They have the highest RAM /ROM in todays world .

But they do forgive when forgiveness is sought from a clean heart filled with thought of God.

Each generation is replete with example be it Alexander , Mughals , Britishers , 1980's congress when Punjabis / Sikhs have avenged there honor at all cost.

At the end of it they nutured no animosity to any one of them under the guiding principle of Sikhism

" Nanak Nam chadi kala terebana sarvat tha bhalla "

love

hps

[Singh With Dunalli]

Yo Canada's Largest City, I got a couple of comments to you man:

1) How come you changed your name, your other name was better, this one is so hard to pronounce

2) Do you know if they will be broadcasting this in other cities besides Toronto? What about Winnipeg? Vancouver? Edmonton? Calgary? Halifax? Etc?

[SINGH20]

Yo Canada's Largest City, I got a couple of comments to you man:

1) How come you changed your name, your other name was better, this one is so hard to pronounce

2) Do you know if they will be broadcasting this in other cities besides Toronto? What about Winnipeg? Vancouver? Edmonton? Calgary? Halifax? Etc?

TORONTO

Opening: Feb 16:

Cineplex Carlton

20 Carlton St. (at Yonge St.), Toronto

(416) 598-2309

AMC Kennedy Commons

33 William Kitchen Rd.

Scarborough

(416) 335 5323

Empire Square One

100 City Center Drive

Missisauga

(905) 275 2640

Empire Empress Walk

5095 Yonge St. (Empress Ave.)

North York

(416) 223-9550

Hindi print: without subtitles

Rainbow Woodbine

Woodbine Center Mall

500 Rexdale Blvd. (at Hwy 27)

Etobicoke

(416 213 9048

MONTREAL

Opening: Feb 23

AMC Forum 22

2313 St. Catherine West

Montreal

(514) 904 1250

VANCOUVER

Opening: Feb 23

Empire Granville 7

855 Granville St.

Vancouver

(604) 684 4000

Cineplex Strawberry Hill Grande

12161 72nd Ave

Surrey, BC

(604) 501 9400

More info -> http://www.amuthefilm.com/release_north_america.htm

[Singh With Dunalli]

^ Cool. Thanks for the information man. :TH:

[disguised]

yeah.. i uh got an email regarding about this film.. looks ppretty interesting!!!

[Singh With Dunalli]

I hope a lot of people from Canada's Largest City went to watch the film. The weekend needed a FULL HOUSE.