Even as the state government and the political parties in Tamil Nadu are vociferously protesting the latest incident of firing and killing of an Indian fisherman by the Sri Lankan Navy, a feature-length docu-fiction that portrays real stories of victims from either side of the Palk Strait has been denied clearance by the regional committee of the Censor Board.
Sengadal (red sea) � the Dead Sea is an experiment in participatory film-making which incorporates the stories recounted by widows of fishermen killed by Lankan Navy, Tamil refugees from across the sea and the local fishermen who have to deal with the state police and naval authorities of both countries. The period is set between February and May 2009, the last stages of civil conflict in Sri Lanka.
The regional committee of the Censor Board, however, did not clear the film stating: �The film contains many present political references in a denigrative way and usage of many unparliamentary words. There are some denigrating references to the functioning of the Sri Lankan government.�
Director Leena Manimekalai, an award-winning documentary maker who is debuting as a feature film maker, has decided to approach the appellate board in Delhi.
�This is a factual-fiction work that is trying to tell the story of ordinary lives caught in a brutal war and cold indifference of politics. The people in it are real, so are the stories they are narrating; why should there be any bar on truth,� she asked.
Leena also plays one of the four protagonists in the film � acting as a film-maker trying to capture these lives and facing the wrong side of the establishment for that.
The script is written by Shobasakthi, an LTTE soldier-turned-writer now living in France as a refugee, and C Jerrold. It took them months of interactions with the local people in Dhanushkodi in Rameshwaram, the tip of India which is only 18 km from Lankan shores.