AMBARIEN ALQADAR
The Ghetto Girl
Documentary, 28 mins, India
Credits: Director, Producer, Editor, Second Camera
The Ghetto Girl was a name used for me as I went to school in New Delhi during the 1990s. My home was in a Muslim neighbourhood known as 'The Little Pakistan'. The school was in a part of the city that saw a massive post-liberalization transformation; a city of malls, apartments blocks and buildings. But the lives of people who lived close by saw little change. I revoke that process of name-calling in this personal documentary that unfolds as a third person narrative about a girl who walks the streets in search of a lost home movie. Streets are full of stories about disillusionment that have come to constitute the experience of being middle-class Muslims in India today. This sense of disillusionment finds a way home in a mother who refuses to be photographed, due to her changing beliefs. But the girl discovers an abandoned family album, bringing her memories of a time when it was possible to photograph. But was this a family album or a home movie? Did it really exist, or was it part of the girl’s false memory? The search takes the girl into inventing her own maps, creating her own home movie and reflecting on the meaning of belonging, community and history. A tale of love and loss about being Muslim in India today. After making the film, I received a letter from the Censorship Board requiring me to remove sections in the film that referred to this neighbourhood as ‘Little Pakistan’, since there are so many Muslims in this neighbourhood, it is an ‘assumed’ hiding ground for terrorists. So here is the double bind: one cannot speak as a Muslim, even though one is targeted as such.
“An intimate and personal exploration of the intersectional experience of Muslim women in India”.
Urvashi Butalia, noted Indian feminist writer, publisher and activist.
“A "transgression" of borders by even observing, and certainly of using the camera. Your transgression of being a woman and pressing your point. And the utter exclusion, the wall that is erected in response---the categorical exclusion of your body and mind, and the exclusion of your gaze. A powerful, dense, incisive piece”.
Sarah Drury, NYC based Artist and Curator, Borders in a Single Shot: After Farocki, Berlin
Awards
Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, Best Graduate Student Film Award, American Anthropological Association, USA 2014
Indian Documentary Producers Association Award for Excellence, India 2012
Special Jury Award, Federation of Film Societies of India-SIGNS, 2012
Juried Exhibitions
Loss and Transience, Hong Gah Museum, Taiwan
Art Creates Change, Kym Preusse Speaker Series, Toronto, Canada
Elephants in the Dark, Refractions on Muslim Identity, Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology
International Visual Sociology Association, New York
Huret and Specter Gallery, Boston
William Harris Gallery, Rochester Institute of Technology
Screenings
I View World Human Rights Film Festival
New York City South Asian Film Festival
Official Selection, International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul, S. Korea
Official Selection, Tempo Dokumentär Festival, Stockholm
Official Selection International Association of Women in Radio and Television, Our Lives to Live
Official Selection, International Film Festival of Kerala, India
Official Selection, The Open Frame Film Festival, India
International Conference on Islam, Gender and Youth in South and South-East Asia, Berlin
Deptt. of Visual Anthropology, Towson University, Washington DC
Young India Fellowship Program, Ashoka University, India
Kriti, New Delhi, India
Alliance Française, Mumbai, India
Publications
The Ghetto Girl, Media Fields Journal, Issue 5: Critical Explorations in Memory and Space, University of California Santa Barbara 2012
Crew
Editing Consultant: Sikay Tang
Cinematographer: Shakeb Ahmed
Distribution: The Public Service Broadcasting Trust, India
Related: Tales From a Place Less Travelled
