The legendary Indian documentarian illustrates “the personal is political” with this rich film that tracks the intertwined histories of his family and India itself.
Anand Patwardhan is known for his brave documentaries that question his country’s dominant Hindu nationalist ideology. In The World Is Family (an old Sanskrit phrase), Patwardhan examines the memories of his family’s elders who had fought for India’s independence alongside Mahatma Gandhi. As Patwardhan learned about his family’s history, he began filming them with whatever equipment was at hand and soon all family gatherings became an exercise in oral history. A decade after his parents’ deaths, Patwardhan revisited the footage and found it a revelation. Today, self-confessed supremacists whose ideology once inspired Gandhi’s murder are in power. As they rewrite India’s history, memories of the past have become more precious than mere personal nostalgia. In Hindi with English subtitles. (96 mins., DCP)
