Responses to Sunanda Bhat’s “Have you seen the arana?”: Documentary film about Wayanad – Kerala

In a world that has grown more dynamic and uncertain, where diversity and differences make way for standardization and uniformity, the film explores the effects of a rapidly changing landscape on lives and livelihoods. Set in Wayanad, in South India, ‘Have you seen the arana?’ is a journey through a rich and bio-diverse region that is witnessing drastic transformation in the name of ‘development’ – read more >>

THE HINDU | Catherine Rhea Roy

“I am closely connected to my subjects and am concerned about how I represent them. You can present right and wrong in many ways but you must allow your viewer to form their opinion and that is important.” read more »

DEAR CINEMA | Bikas Misra

“Have you seen the Arana” works as a film because of its characters and their warmth. It’s a great achievement on the part of the filmmaker to build this kind of intimacy with her characters…” read more »

DECCAN CHRONICLE | Merin Maria James

“We’ve shown cycles of agriculture, landscape and people’s lives. Rather than showing talking heads, the film observes and becomes a part of the dramatic life cycle of the people and their ecosystem…” read more »

BANGALORE MIRROR | Ayesha Tabassum

“I had read a few articles by journalist P Sainath about the agriculture crisis in Wayanad. One of those stories described a bus journey by a lady who was moving away from the region and was trying to look for a livelihood in Karnataka. That’s when I decided to visit Wayanad and started working on the film…” read more »

MATHRUBHUMI | Premchand

‘If an arana bites, death is immediate’, goes the proverb. In the old Kerala, in the time of (OV Vijayan’s) ‘Khasakkinte Ithihasam’, the arana thus filled the images of dinosaurs in children’s minds. Where is that arana today?” read more »
read the article in malayalam »

Source: Songline Films | Sunanda Bhat | Have you seen the arana?
Address : https://www.songlinefilms.com/
Date Visited: 10 June 2023

Contemporary society preaches this ideal of unindividualised equality because it needs human atoms, each one the same, to make them function in a mass aggregation, smoothly, without friction; all obeying the same commands, yet everybody being convinced that he is following his own desires. Just as modern mass production requires the standardisation of commodities, so the social process requires standardisation of man, and this standardisation is called ‘equality’.

Source: The Art of Loving by social psychologist Erich Fromm (New York: Harper & Row, 1956), pp. 15-16
URL: https://archive.org/details/TheArtOfLoving/page/n29/mode/1up
Date Visited: 10 June 2023

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