November 6, 2002
7:00 PM - Wednesday
Followed by Third and World

50 minutes
A film with Arundhati Roy
Language : English
Year and Production: 2002, India
Hosted by filmmaker Aradhana Seth
Q&A follows screening.

"I suddenly realized… I command the space to raise a dissenting voice, and if I don't do it, it's as political an act as doing it… to stay quiet is as political an act as speaking out." - Arundhati Roy, author of Booker Prize winning novel "The God of Small Things".

DAM/AGE traces writer Arundhati Roy's bold and controversial campaign against the Namada dam project in India, which led to a conviction for criminal contempt by India's Supreme Court. As the film traces the events that led up to her imprisonment, Roy meditates on her own personal negotiation with her fame, the responsibility it places on her as a writer, a political thinker and a citizen, and the choices she has made.

As she puts it in DAM/AGE: " "The God of Small Things" became more and more successful and I watched as in the city I lived in the air became blacker, the cars became sleeker, the gates grew higher and the poor were being stuffed like lice into the crevices, and all the time my bank account burgeoned. I began to feel as though every feeling in "The Good of Small Things" had been traded in for a silver coin, and I wasn't careful I would become a little silver figurine with a cold, silver heart."

The film shows how Roy chose to use her fame to stand up to powerful interests backed by both capital and the state, revealing through her writing "how power shines the light, and what it chooses to illuminate and what it chooses to leave in the darkness." For Roy the story of the Narmada Valley is not just the story of modern India, but of what is happening in the world today: " Who counts, who doesn't, what matters, what doesn't, what counts as a cost, what doesn't, what counts as collateral damage, what doesn't."

In a clear and accessible manner, the film weaves together a number of issues that lie at the heart of politics today: from the consequences of development and globalization to the ever more urgent need for state accountability and the freedom of speech.