New Delhi: A group of filmmakers and five film collectives have launched an online festival to showcase the work of documentary filmmakers Saba Dewan and Rahul Roy. Dewan and Roy are being investigated by the Delhi Police in relation to the February riots – a probe that several opposition leaders, rights activists and others have said is being used to crack down on dissent and shield the real perpetrators of communal violence.
‘In Solidarity: A Festival of Films by Saba Dewan and Rahul Roy’ is an online festival – film links are shared and made available online for a limited period of time, and then people discuss them on the Facebook group. The organisers are Marupakkam in association with Vikalp@Prithvi (Mumbai), Pedestrian Pictures (Bangalore), Cinema of Resistance (Ghaziabad) and People’s Film Collective (Kolkata).
The festival launches on October 22, and the first film being discussed is When Four Friends Meet by Roy. The 2000 film looks at four young working-class men living in Delhi’s Jehangirpuri, how they interact with women, their precarious jobs and more. The second film, being screened on October 28, is Dewan’s Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi, a portrait of a young woman who work in a Mumbai dance bar.
A full schedule is available here.
Also read: Rahul Roy, Saba Dewan – Named in Delhi Police’s Riot Chargesheet – Have a History of Promoting Peace
Dewan and Roy were summoned for questioning in September by the Special Cell (New Delhi Range), which claimed to have found their connection with some students’ organisations, and with a WhatsApp group called the ‘Delhi Protests Support Group (DPSG)’.
Hundreds artists and filmmakers have expressed solidarity with them, saying it is “unacceptable that dissenting artists, academicians, activists, journalists and others are being harassed with digressive investigations, and arrested based on fabricated and forced confessions”.
Both Roy and Dewan and well-known for their activism and social service, including during the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests and the February riots in North-East Delhi. It was on Roy’s petition that the Delhi high court demanded that the police create safe passages for ambulances in the area. During the COVID-19 lockdown, he created a group in Gurgaon that supplied cooked food and rations to stranded migrant workers.