The following was written by Gunveen, the director of a popular film from this year's onKAUR film festival. We encourage all Sikh filmmakers to promote their films and get more exposure for all the wonderful ideas and inspirations contained in your films. Now let's hear from Gunveen:
Waheguru ji ka Khalsa
Waheguru ji ki Fateh jio…
As per an old saying – “If you educate a man, you just educate a man. If you educate a woman, you educate a generation.” We at SikhiSidak believe that women are the future of our Panth. It is imperative to uplift their status in society so that they can breathe and live freely.
SikhNet Film Festival 2013, a very well organized and interesting fest, gave us all an opportunity to bring forward some vital facts of women’s lives, and possibly share a remediation plan for the same. With this being announced, the entire SikhiSidak Media Group (SMG) got together to work on this project. As a result of some endless efforts from the entire team ‘ROAR of the KAUR’ was produced and submitted to the Film Festival.
SMG is involved in various initiatives like movie (religious) screenings, ramp shows, road shows, plays, theatre, etc. Since the movie was available only on the Internet, there was NO possibility for this strong message to reach out to those who don’t have access to the Internet or who are not active on social websites. Hence, my team came up with an idea. Just like we organize movie screenings for other movies in Gurudwaras, in a similar way, we can organize screenings for this movie as well. This will ensure that the message reaches out to larger groups and more people will be educated. While this was being discussed, one of the female volunteers suggested that we must organize shows particularly in schools, as it will be a good learning for students at this tender age, and it will be a morale booster for girls.
Some of the volunteers reached out to DSGMC (Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee) to take special permission from them for these shows to be organized for students before their vacation commences. The real action time started for the team when we went to schools, colleges, Gurudwaras, road side to organize these shows which were followed by a quick question and answer round. The SEWA (screenings) are still in progress. We are showing this movie to as many people as we can. We wish that, through this movie, the message is conveyed to the masses so that woman will get much deserved respect from the society. One very important question that we ask after every screening is – “What learning did you get from this movie?” The answers have been pretty interesting, some of them are mentioned below -
- Girls are NOT inferior to anyone in this world
- We are Daughters of Kalgidhar & we should not underestimate ourselves
- Taking a legal action was the best part of it because in a Democracy we must make most of our rights
- Rabjeet (the central character) displayed how powerful women can be
- Every Girl must watch this movie since such problems are being faced by all girls
The conversations between SMG & the students got very interesting as the kind of feedback they shared was heart touching. Especially the way the girls spoke on this subject. The kind of interactive sessions these screenings turned out to be was an achievement in itself. Calling out one particular experience, during the question/ answer time in one of the schools after the screening, the conversation took a big twist. We got into the mode of talking on the topic of ‘Success’ and how students can achieve what they want in their lives. In some of the colleges and schools, we discussed the traits of positive body language. We thought it would be helpful for students to know and implement this in their personal lives.
As Gursikh, it’s our primary responsibility to learn something everyday. These screenings turned out to be great learning opportunities for myself and my team .
After watching ROAR of the KAUR, many students now want to participate in our projects. We have a list of aspiring actors, rappers, singers etc, and our talent pool is increasing day by day. We feel blessed that through this project and the screenings, we got to learn a lot.