Earth

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As you know, I’m involved in GalleryFilm, the film society which is part of The Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery. A few weeks ago, we showed Deepa Mehta’s “Earth”, set in India during the weeks leading up to the partition of India and Pakistan. We themed the evening with free samosas and Indian tidbits sponsored by local foodstores SMBS and Cheeseblock in Lordship Lane and Cobra beer donated by Cobra. There was a prize draw to win tickets to lectures on Indian art at the Picture Gallery - and special bonus tickets to a talk by this year’s Turner prize winner Simon Starling.

Starting a new local society is always an uncertain affair. Will anyone come? Have we pitched the film selection just right - or completely wrong? This was only our second screening and while more people came to the first film “Mona Lisa” than we had expected, we were stunned to find we were fully booked for “Earth” even before the doors opened. We managed to squeeze in five more seats while the queue of people who hadn’t booked grew longer. We rushed in and out of the auditorium counting seats and panicking that we might have sold too many tickets. In the end we had to turn people away.

None of us on the GalleryFilm team had seen the film before the screening but I gamely invited the hundred or so audience to stay for a discussion afterwards. The events in the film are seen through the eyes of an eight-year old Parsee girl, whose kind but distant parents leave her in the care of the Hindu maid and her circle of Muslim, Sikh and Christian friends. As the country draws closer to partition, the ethnic and religious tensions come up to the surface and the friendships begin to tear apart, ending in violence, tragedy and betrayal. As I sat there watching all this, I was conscious of how starkly it contrasted with the mellow convivial pre-show drinks and nibblies we’d just had. I started to worry about the discussion I had promised after the film - would the emotions stirred up in the film spill out into the debate? Would people complain that this wasn’t the nice jolly evening they’d planned on?

As it turned out, when the lights came up, it was as if the film had made us all in that room connect with each other at a real and human level even though we had all one hundred of us only really met that night. In the audience were a mix of ages and among the Caucasian faces, there were Asian young people and families who had come - parent, grandparents and the younger generations. A younger English woman, referring to the legacy left by the British as portrayed in the film, said she felt shame at being British. Someone else pointed to the parallels in Iraq where different tribal groups were fighting amongst themselves.An older Asian lady shared that she had been around seven at the time of partition and had witnessed painful things that she had never talked about. An older Asian gentleman told me how crowds had come to his grandfather’s house looking for a man they were after to kill and how his grandfather had managed to disperse the crowd. I’m sure many of those families went home that night and talked and shared their personal stories in a way they might not have if they had not come to see the film.

One Asian lady emailed this to us afterwards: “Thank you so much for the recent showing of ‘Earth’. I had a particular interest in seeing this film. My mother had moved from her home town, G—-, to move to S—- to live with her new husband and new in-laws in 1947 after her marriage.

My mother always said that they were unable to understand how neighbours who had been their close friends suddenly became their enemies simply because they were Hindus. The partition of India was an extremely traumatic experience for all concerned.” *

I have always loved movies but that night was the first time I really experienced the true power of film.

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*I have anonymised the details for the purposes of privacy.

GalleryFilm is run entirely by volunteers - as is the Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery. All profits go to support the work of the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The next film is Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover” on Monday 18 December.

Our 2007 season takes off in the new year with “Now, Voyager”, “The Wings of the Dove”, “Jailhouse Rock” and “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”

To find out more about GalleryFilm and book tickets for our films, click here or go to www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk and follow the links to Friends Events.

The film is available in the US or UK versions. You can buy a UK version from amazon.co.uk, by clicking on the picture here: