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January 2016 Newsletter
- Posted on 3rd Feb
- Category: Blog
Hello Friends,
It's been a whirlwind of a year (from Toronto to Amsterdam to Mumbai and back again) with so much news, but so little time. So for now, we'd like to share where we'll be screening next (check our screening page for updates) and welcome those of you new to the list. With much more soon.
And for those of you in India, if you'd like to hear about the developments in our audience engagement campaign, or become a partner, please email to set up a meeting with Elisa in Mumbai or Bangalore from Feb. 7th.UPCOMING SCREENINGS
February
14th 12:00pm Victoria Film Festival
18th TBA FLO Festival Mumbai (early afternoon - Elisa & Selvi attending)
25th 7:00pm Kingston Canadian Film Festival Opening Night Tickets Here (Elisa & Special guest attending)
27th 7:30pm Wakefield International Film Festival
28th 4:00pm Wakefield International Film Festival (Elisa & Special guest attending)
March
2nd 5:30pm Frauen Film Tag Vienna
4th 4:00pm Women's Film Festival Vermont
5th 3:00pm Salem Film Festival (Elisa attending)
April
8th TBA Atlanta Film Festival (Elisa attending)
More festivals coming soon, including screenings in Greece and Finland.SHARING
As a tiny indie production company, we rely on people like you to get the word out about the film. Please like us on facebook, follow us on twitter and post about the film, share this email and ask your friends to subscribe to this email list.
THANK YOU
We'd like to thank you for supporting the film in so many ways. There have been donations for Selvi's travel and the Indian screening series through Indiegogo and in the mail. Strollers, snow suits and toys lent and gifted to Selvi. Meals delivered and shared Indian style on the floor. Translations, interpretations and graphics designed like this banner. Brainstorming sessions and sage advice. Pots of soup, parties hosted,money raised, friends made, and through all of this, a deep connection to the film and the girl/woman in front of the camera. Your kindness is so appreciated.
Best wishes
Elisa, and the team at Driving with Selvi headquartersTo read the original newsletter click here.
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September 2015 Newsletter
- Posted on 26th Sep
- Category: Blog
Hello Friends,
We’re so chuffed – the World Premiere of Driving with Selvi will take place at the Raindance Film Festival this coming Monday! We can’t wait to share the film with all our friends in London, UK:
A quick personal note to say that I'm on my way to London, I can hear the gate calling! You'll see below that we are fundraising again, this time to bring Selvi to some of the festivals where the film is screening, and also for the film's social impact campaign. We're doing this through Indiegogo, though in a very unorthodox way. We are not offering perks. None. Every cent minus the Indiegogo fees will go directly to the work we are doing. Many of you have been asking how to contribute, I hope you'll find this a simple way.
Hope to see you at one of our screenings soon, Elisa
RAINDANCE SCREENINGS
World Premiere: Monday, 28 September, 18:00
2nd screening: Wednesday, September 30, 15:50
Location (both screenings): Vue Picadilly
Elisa will be in attendance for both screenings and Q&As. Tickets have gone on sale! It’s an intimate theatre, so if you are planning to come, please get your ticket early. If you are going to be there, let us know, or make sure to say hello to Elisa.MORE FESTIVAL NEWS
We now have dates for the following festivals – and tickets are already on sale for some of them. Elisa will be in attendance for all but Charleston (see note about Selvi).
Edmonton International Film Festival, Edmonton, Canada
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Hot Springs, USA
UNAFF (United Nations Association Film Festival), Palo Alto, USA (opening night!)Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York City, USA.
Charleston International Film Festival, Charleston, North Carolina, USA,
More very exciting festival announcements to come – stay tuned for our next newsletter, or get up-to-the-minute news on Facebook or Twitter.
FILM STATUS
We’re thrilled to say Elisa wrapped post-production on the film last week. Here’s a nice photo of her holding the DCP copy (a special format used by theatres only) that many of our festivals will use to screen the film.
All the best,
- Elisa, Selvi, Julia, and the whole Driving with Selvi TeamTo read the original newsletter click here
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Guest Post: Making it Real
- Posted on 15th Dec
- Category: Blog
As part of my role on this film, I spend time each week looking at the latest news about women’s experiences with violence or discrimination in India and around the world. We try to stay up-to-the minute on the issues affecting women, and to share the most significant stories we find (both good news and bad) with our audience.
While I was doing this about two months ago, I had a moment that really stopped me in my tracks, and I’m still thinking about it. I was trying to find a specific kind of meme to share on social media – you know what I mean, an image that’s got some kind of quote or statistic layered over top of it. Memes don’t take long for us to look at and they can be quite impactful, which is why they often get shared.
I had it in my mind that I’d like to find a meme on child marriage. I figured I could find an image that had an inspirational quote on it about how when we allow girls to fulfill their potential instead of marrying young, the whole of society benefits. Something like this (found subsequently). I put “India child brides” into Google’s Image search, expecting to find pages of these memes. Instead, I found pages and pages of pictures of desperate and sad-looking young girls – sometimes very young girls. They were all bejeweled and dressed in fine red wedding saris, such a disconnect from the misery on their faces. It was heartbreaking and totally unexpected. I was really seeing child marriage come to life before my eyes, and it affected me more than any amount of reading about it could do.
Selvi is the counterpoint to all of those terribly distressed girl brides. In a previous post I talked about what seeing Selvi on film feels like. It’s a powerful, visceral antidote to all the sad stories we hear and see. Selvi makes that antidote real.
- Julia Morgan was the Associate Producer on Driving with Selvi. You can follow her on twitter at @JuliaMorgan3 -
Guest Post: John Rathiganthan
- Posted on 7th Aug
- Category: Blog
Many of Selvi’s problems illustrated in the film originate from a society that treats women as commodities. Young women, many of whom would be considered children here, are married to men as a way for their parents to ease their own burden. Daughters are treated as a problem that can be solved by marrying them away. Growing up in a Tamil-Canadian home and within the Tamil-Canadian community, I’ve seen this attitude first-hand. I’ve seen it plenty, and I’ve seen it often. Attitudes here are shifting, but only at a glacial pace.
This is one of the many lingering curses of a rural, agricultural society being dragged into the modern era. The Dowry system, though outlawed by India in 1961, is still widely practiced all over the country. One of the holdovers from this is a society that looks at girls and women as disposable. They are kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery on a regular basis. I would call it alarming but for many it’s a regular part of daily life. So much so that it’s commonplace and spoken of as though the young woman had only moved away. The film details one such story and hers is just one among thousands of others.
If these things are all such big issues, many people wonder how they could still be going on if India is modernizing. The answer is simple: these practices all benefit men. The patrons of brothels where girls are sold are men. This is not discussing men who patronize sex workers who are choosing their profession. These are men who know they are raping the women they are paying for the time of. These are men who are marrying girls who are barely 12. These aren’t monsters; these are normal men who are trained from birth to treat the women around them as objects.
Part of solving long-ingrained sexism is not just empowering women; it’s also educating men who are complicit in the system that oppresses the women around them. It’s re-educating them to understand the women in their lives are capable and intelligent. Getting men who are silent on the street while a woman is being harassed to stand up to their friends and tell them their behavior is unacceptable. Part of reinforcing women’s rights in India is teaching men to not prop up a broken system. Equality shouldn’t be so hard a path. At its most basic, it’s people seeing each other as people. Everything else is an excuse for poor behavior.
Driving with Selvi is a movie that goes a long way towards presenting the plight of Indian women in an unflinching and honest way. The sight of Selvi’s tears as she recounts a story she wishes she had left buried in memory, will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Written by Guest Blogger John Rathiganthan
John Rathiganthan is a freelancer writer, novelist, and comic book author. He writes about video games, science and feminism. You can find him on Twitter @fohnicus.
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Guest Post: Daniel Overberger
- Posted on 27th Jun
- Category: Blog
In my apartment in Los Angeles, I sat on the floor waiting with my bags and guitar case for the shuttle to pick me up and take me to the airport. I had this returning premonition that music would interfere with my yoga studies while I was in India. I jumped up and unpacked my guitar. I sat for a while, feeling sure and then unsure of my decision until I was startled by the sound of the phone ringing. The shuttle was here to pick me up. I repacked my guitar and ran out the door.
Daniel Overberger - Image Courtesy of Voyage LA Magazine
I had been in Mysore a few days. I was sitting in the Garden Cafe behind the Yogashala thinking about how I would love to meet some musicians to jam with while I was here. I looked up and in walked a guy with this bag under his arm. I asked him if he's got an instrument in his bag. He does. I introduce myself and he says “My name is Pedro (Collares de Moraes)”. He said he is from Brazil but has come to India from Barcelona, where he is a street musician. The instrument he was carrying was a Hang. I told him I play guitar and that I was staying across the street if he would like to jam. I felt a lot of apprehension in him and he said, “I'm only here for a few days so maybe.” I took that as a big NO and felt a little judged.
After the evening yoga class, my friend Julie came into my room. She said there is going to be a big party tonight in the house we were staying in and there will be live music. Excited, I asked what kind of music was going to be played. She looked at me strangely and said, “how should I know? It's you and that guy Pedro playing it.”
About an hour later people showed up and I invited them into my small room until we couldn't fit any more. The rest of the people stayed in the doorway. Pedro showed up. We didn't talk much. He pulled out his Hang and started playing.
It was as if we had known each other all our lives. We had musical conversation with ease. We played back and forth. Eventually, people started clapping their hand and stomping their feet. Three girls started singing some Indian chants and one girl was banshee screaming as the music reached its peak. I felt the room lift itself off the earth and float in the sky. I felt a part of some collective consciousness. Shit, I was the centre of it.
Afterwards a woman stood up. She told me her names was Elisa and that she was doing a documentary film called Radhamma's Dream. She asked if we could do the soundtrack if she booked a studio for the film. I was stunned. I looked at Pedro then back at Elisa and said yes.
Three days later we all headed to the only studio in Mysore. Because the engineers were a little bit confused I decided to put my skills from Los Angelos to help out in the end and ended up acting as the producer. We worked on songs all morning and in the afternoon Elisa brought in five Indian girls around the age of ten who sang with us.
After we recorded the soundtrack Elisa invited everyone involved in the recording session to come to Odanadi the girls shelter she she was doing her documentary on. When we arrived everyone seemed to know Elisa. They smiled at the rest of us with discernment. They took us to a big building the size of half a gymnasium. About twenty children came in through the a different door dressed in traditional, colourful, Indian clothing and began to do a choreographed dance. After the dance, some of the children wanted to meet us and we all took pictures with each other. Eventually we were back on the motor scooters driving back into Mysore as the sun set behind us. Wind still warm in our hair. The calming sounds of engines and rubber on asphalt.
Bio:
Daniel Overberger is a musician, yoga teacher and writer in Los Angeles, California. He is a regular contributor to LA Yoga Magazine and has recorded several albums with his band Dharma Gypsys. You can learn about his work at his website here.
