Mara Matta

This article examines the play Purdah (1993) by the playwright Ismail Mahomed, a Pakistani writer and director born in Johannesburg (29 May 1959) who has been active on the theatre scene in South Africa for the last thirty years. Purdah1 is a one-woman stage performance that addresses the issue of seclusion and subjugation of the Muslim Indian women of Lenasia, the neighbourhood of Johannesburg, which during the apartheid regime was constructed as a ghetto for the Indian community. I argue that the play, narrating the story of Ayesha, a young girl subjected to the customary practices of her community and Muslim family laws, is an instance of ‘issue theatre’ that creates a venue for discussing the seclusion of women in purdah not just as a curtailing of freedom and a breach of human rights, but also     as a psychological form of ‘colonisation of the mind’ that impinges on the development of woman’s psyche and impedes the act of ‘creation’, in the double meaning of artistic ‘creativi...

In India, la rivendicazione dello spazio pubblico come territorio di esercizio della libertà ha dato luogo negli ultimi decenni a vari esercizi di performatività che hanno visto il corpo delle donne indiane divenire mezzo e strumento di forti azioni di protesta. Poiché proprio sul corpo delle donne si iscrivono le norme che lo asserviscono al potere patriarcale, alcune donne hanno pensato di ribaltarne il senso facendo ricorso proprio alla capacità performativa del corpo nudo. In tal modo, esse hanno utilizzato il nudo femminile come discorso etico e politico di tipo sovversivo, facendo sì che il corpo non fosse reso partecipe di forme di discriminazione. Se il rischio che si presenta nello svestire gli abiti sociali e il “buon costume” dettato dal genere è quello di esporsi a una pericolosa visibilità, che potrebbe accentuare piuttosto che prevenire o evitare la vulnerabilità del corpo nudo, la strategia della nudità utilizzata dalle donne come arma di dissenso politico e di denunc...

Séance : TRADUIRE- interprètes et traduisants [00:00:00 à 00:01:48] Présentation par Véronique BONTEMPS (CNRS, IRIS) [00:01:48 à 00:20:18] Yasmine BOUAGGA (CNRS, Triangle, ENS Lyon / Liminal) : « Les mots de l’asile. Ce que l’écoute des interactions entre migrants, associations et administrations éclaire des expériences migratoires (premier accueil : Paris, Lyon) » [00:20:18 à 00:20:18] Key note. David ZAMMIT (Université de Malte) : « Constructing and de-constructing refugee status in Maltese asylum trials » [00:01:48 à 00:36:24] Pauline DOYEN (Watizat, Liminal) & Emily MUGEL (Watizat) : « Traduire les mots de l’asile dans le cadre du Guide de la demandeuse et du demandeur d’asile à Paris » [00:36:24 à 00:57:05] Hala TREFI GHANNAM (Interprète, traductrice) : « Médiation linguistique et culturelle auprès des réfugiés syriens » [00:57:05 à 01:13:23] Jimy BOULOS (Interprète, traductrice, secrétaire générale de l’association CPmed.) : « Traduire les paroles des migrants : au plus près d...

Séance : S’ADRESSER – récits et destinataires [00:00:00 à 00:19:27] Mara MATTA (U. La Sapienza, Rome) : « Words of Hope, Rehearsals of Freedom: the Glossary of Survival and Other Bengali Language ‘Travel Documents’ » [00:19:27 à 00:46:01] Alexandra GALITZINE-LOUMPET (Cessma Inalco / Liminal) : « La langue des murs : temporalités et spatialités des inscriptions du centre de premier accueil de la porte de la Chapelle » [00:46:01 à 01:03:35] Belgheis JAFARI (Inalco/Liminal) : « Les inscriptions murales des migrants : résistance contre l’oubli et les pertes » [01:03:35 à 01:24:20] Hisham ALY (Coordonnateur, Secours Catholique Calais) : « Espaces d’expression des personnes exilées » [01:24:20 à 01:31:29] Karameldeen HASSAN HARON : (Association La voix des réfugiés) [00:19:27 à 01:49:31] Discutante : Anouche KUNTH (CNRS, IRIS / Liminal) [01:49:31 à fin] Discussion Lien vers la biographie des intervenants Présentation du colloque :Depuis novembre 2017, les chercheur.e.s de Liminal, program...

This article addresses the relationship between exile and poverty in the context of the Tibetan Diaspora, looking at its representation through the lenses of some feature films made by Tibetan filmmakers in exile. In their unrequited aspiration for a better life and a transcendent existence beyond the mystic line, these films tackle poverty, precarity, disenfranchisement, alienation and nostalgia beyond the mystic line, adopting a more nuanced and critical approach to the re-presentation of Tibet on screen and of Tibetan refugees’ lives on the global stage

The chapter is part of a book edited by Gayatri Devi and Najat Rahman titled Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema (Wayne University Press, 2014) «Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema explores what humor theorists have identified as an "emancipatory," "liberatory," even "revolutionary" function to humor. Among the questions contributors ask are: How does Middle Eastern cinema and media highlight the stakes and place of humor in art and in life? What is its relation to the political? Can humor in cinematic art be emancipatory? What are its limits for its intervention or transformation? Contributors examine the region’s masterful auteurs, such as Abbas Kiarostami, Youssef Chahine, and Elia Suleiman and cover a range of cinematic settings, including Egypt, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. They also trace diasporic issues in the distinctive cinema of India and Pakistan.» See http://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/humor-middle-eastern-cinema

This article looks at 19/87, both in its literary and cinematic modes of storytelling, as important authorial works that aim at deconstructing the artificial idea of a pure khasiness, where those who allegedly ‘do-not-belong’ are constantly placed in an ambiguous and, sometimes, dangerous situation. Both the film by Diengdoh and Lyngdoh and the short story by Pariat represent important authorial works that combine artistic experimentation with social commitment, contributing to the development of innovative literatures and cinemas in India

This paper aims at shedding some light on the cultural crossings and boundaries between two ancient civilizations - India and China. Looking at the history of the Chinese Diaspora in India, the paper investigates the complex cultural and political dynamics between two great Asian countries that, over the centuries, have repeatedly come into contact, into contrast, into partial agreement and, possibly, on the verge of a long-sought common vision for a stronger Asia, the dream firstly harboured by Nehru in his much quoted expression ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’

[Dalla prefazione] This work begins with a visionary poem and ends with a poetic vision of Nepal on its path towards Utopia. Sustaining and nurturing hope, Nepali people have defiantly refused to plunge intodespair, notwithstanding the enormous challenges ahead. In thetrue spirit of Bloch’s principle of hope, they have rehearsed ‘for the example’ on Nepal’s historical stage, performing on it ‘a theatre for better reasons’

This paper looks at the cinematic productions by Tibetan filmmakers in China. Walking through geographies of power, it analyses Tibetan films and the discourses that they elaborate in a spatial temporality where Tibetan film-makers and writers face the challenge of de-constructing and re-constructing an image (or, perhaps, multiple, layered or juxtaposed images) of Tibet, which cannot dispose totally of the representations displayed in Chinese and Western films on the subject

This article attempts a reading of the dramatic text Jal (Eng. Water), by Bengali writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi (Dhaka 1926),1 as a site for writing subaltern history and for rehearsing revolution. Devi’s stories are popular as instances of engaged literature, which focus on the plights of the indigenous people (ādivāsī) and the untouchables (dalit) in India. Her writings, especially when devised or adapted for the theatre, acquire an even more powerful dimension due to the dynamism of the bodies on stage that make possible the transposition of the text into a performed historiography. Theatre, as devised in her plays, becomes a potential site for performing dissent and effecting social change. As Rustom Bharucha has claimed, the telling of stories matters not just because ‘they enable us to illuminate particularly elusive realities, but because they help us to deal with the aporias of pain’ (2001, 3764). In this sense, Devi’s literary and dramatic texts, especially when brought on stage, force the spectators to become a ‘partakers’ (Schechner, 2003) of the drama which unfolds through the body as a performative site of violent struggle and defiance. Hence, her plays might be considered as ‘some experiments in truth and conflict resolution on the borders of theatre and public culture’ (Bharucha, 2001, 3763) and Devi, as a committed writer ‘meandering’ into tribal life, could be counted as one particularly sensitive writer who meanders into subaltern histories as ‘a pilgrim and a cartographer at the same time’ (Geertz, 1998, 11)

Le verita del velo vuole significare due cose: da una parte riconoscere ad un oggetto —il velo che copre e dissimula le identita dei volti, dei corpi, degli individui— una certa unita di funzione, quale che ne sia la specifica declinazione spazio-temporale e culturale; dall’altra accettare, appunto, che tale oggetto sostanzialmente univoco abbia di fatto una varieta di espressioni, ricezioni, interpretazioni che lo rendono polisemico. Non solo, dunque, in contesti diversi puo essere prodotto, commercializzato, indossato, rappresentato, descritto e interpretato in maniere diverse, tutte vere, a seconda dei punti di vista, ma esso anche nel medesimo contesto, anche nella stessa realta circoscritta, anche nella stessa specifica oggettualita puo avere piu significati e conseguentemente ottemperare ad esigenze di produzione di valore simbolico o di verita in maniera massimamente soggettiva. Contemporaneamente e un oggetto che produce discussione, dibattito, agonismi: ciascuno puo cercare...

This paper discusses the relationship between woman and nature in India from the point of view of contemporary Indian literature and cinema. Nature in India has been often allegorized as either a powerful maternal force or as the site of sexual enticement and ultimate seduction. The binary woman/nature has been pitted against that of man/culture, creating a dichotomy that entangles the destiny of Indian women to that of Indian natural resources, both downgraded by patriarchal customary laws and an increasingly exploitative society

Questo saggio analizza alcune opere letterarie di scrittrici contemporanee appartenenti alla comunità degli Ebrei Baghdadi di Calcutta, la più piccola delle comunità di religione ebraica dell’India, giunta nel Subcontinente alla fine del diciottesimo secolo. Attraverso il romanzo di Jael Silliman, A Man with Many Hats (2013) e l’opera teatrale di Shelley Silas Calcutta Kosher (2004), l’articolo naviga gli spazi interstiziali della memoria e ripercorre le tracce di una «geografia sensoriale» che riporta il lettore tra i vicoli angusti ma pieni di vita di una delle città più importanti e affascinanti dell’India co- loniale: Calcutta. Ribattezzata nel 2001 con il nome di Kolkata, la città che emerge dalle narrazioni letterarie e drammaturgiche di Silliman e Silas resta tuttavia la vecchia Calcutta intrisa dei sapori e dei profumi delle memorie dei suoi abitanti, in particolare quelle degli Ebrei Baghdadi che, nel corso di due secoli, l’hanno eletta come casa, rivendicando un’appartenen...

In 2011, the khasi language film 19/87 was selected for the prestigious International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala. Directed by Wanphrang Diengdoh, in collaboration with the filmmaker Dondor Lyngdoh and the writer Janice Pariat, the film was received by some critics as 'the birth of Khasi New Wave'. Devised as part of an experimental trilogy set in the city of Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, the film tells the story of a Khasi youth, Banri, who befriends a Muslim tailor, Suleiman. Whilst they are both Indian nationals, insiders to the Indian Territory, Suleiman is a dkhar, a term used by the Khasis to refer to people they consider 'outsiders' to their ethnic group, 'foreigners' to the tribal hillsand, ultimately, 'strangers' to the land. The only film of the trilogy to have been released so far, 19/87 is an important work of social history that addresses the ambivalent condition of 'the stranger' in an imaginary Khasiland....

This essay offers a preliminary study of the cultural translation practices by young Tibetan exilic filmmakers in India, whose films, rather than rejecting the masala formula offered by Bollywood, have tentatively adapted it to the expectations of a Tibetan diasporic audience looking for a cinema capable of attending to the escapist needs of their minds while simultaneously catering to the intimate dreams of their hearts. I contend that Tashi Wangchuk and Tsultrim Dorjee’s first long feature Phun Anu Thanu (Two Exiled Brothers, 2006) is as an original film that presents a new offer on the menu of Tibetan diasporic films, a kind of spicy curry that has been advocated as a timely necessity and a yet-to-be-fulfilled desire.

«Il 2016 tristemente registra la scomparsa dalla scena letteraria e artistica di due dei più grandi esponenti del panorama culturale e politico dell’India contemporanea. La morte di Mahasweta Devi (1926-2016), scrittrice e attivista sociale bengalese di fama internazionale, e la successiva scomparsa del regista teatrale manipuri Heisnam Kanhailal (1941-2016), hanno lasciato un vuoto che difficilmente potrà essere colmato. Il loro impegno artistico, personale e sociale per una letteratura militante e un teatro di trasformazione sociale costringono chi resta sulla scena politica e artistica dell’India di oggi a confrontarsi con la loro eredità, a raccogliere una sfida che si rivela, giorno dopo giorno, sempre più pressante.»

In: Marianna Ferrara, Alessandro Saggioro, Giuseppina Paola Viscardi (a cura di). Le verità del velo. Società editrice fiorentina 2017, pp. 281-322.

See: www.sefeditrice.it/scheda.asp?idv=3993

This article discusses some of the recent narratives of India’s Baghdadi Jews, looking at the way works of literature have been recasting this community as an Indian minority referred to as ‘Indian Jewish’ or, more specifically, ‘Calcutta Jewish’. Indulging into nostalgic memory building, adopting literature as a strategical practice of history-writing and engaging into an archaeology of cultural performances, two women authors of Baghdadi Jewish descent have retrieved past lives and memories along the «sensory geographies» of India’s most vibrant colonial city: Calcutta. Since 2001 renamed Kolkata, the city has undergone deep changes in postcolonial times and yet remains the perfect canvas where to perform a new hybrid subjectivity, that of the Indian Jew – or ‘Calcutta Jew’ as some would prefer – testifying to the historical ties and special bond to the city that once upon a time they used to call home. Whilst the remaining Jewish communities of India are undergoing a legal battle for the recognition of their civic and political rights and the granting of the status of ‘minority’ – so far bestowed upon them only by the State of Maharashtra (2016) – some writers are con- tributing to highlight the great history of a forgotten community, the Bagh- dadi Jews, who had arrived in India at the end of the eighteenth century as a «diaspora of hope» and are now claiming an Indian Jewish minoritarian identity, so far denied. From the autobiographical novel by Jael Silliman The Man With Many Hats (2013) to the witty theatre play Calcutta Kosher by Shelley Silas (2004), this article retraces some of the stories of the smallest Indian Jewish community, the Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta. Navigating the lanes of Calcutta/Kolkata, sensory memoryscapes evocatively reframe the history of this minor transnational community.

Published in:

Lo Bue, Erberto (Ed.). (2014). Il Tibet, fra mito e realtà. Tibet between Myth and Reality: Atti del Convegno per il centenario della nascita di Fosco Maraini (Gabinetto G.P. Vieusseux - Provincia di Firenze, Firenze, 14 marzo 2012). Firenze: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki, pp. 113-134.

DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt1tqx7mv.13

«Sono emersi da una discarica di Lampedusa, anch’essi naufraghi “senza memoria e senza storia”. Due documenti che sembravano finiti lì quasi per caso, in una lingua che all’inizio nessuno riconosceva. Prima ci è arrivato tra le manu un fascicolo di fogli macchiati da una grafia nitida, chiara, a volte un po’ convoluta, che ha fatto sperare in uno scritto “rivelatorio”, come una lettera, un racconto, un diario. Poi è arrivato un taccuino nero, con un nome e poco altro.»

In: Mosca Mondadori Arnoldo, Cacciatore Alfonso, Triulzi Alessandro (a cura di), Il lamento e la lode. Liturgie migranti. Bibbia e Corano a Lampedusa (2014), pp. 163-169.

http://www.morcelliana.net/orso-blu/1633-bibbia-e-corano-a-lampedusa-9788835037453.html

This paper discusses the relationship between woman and nature in India from the point of view of contemporary Indian literature and cinema. Nature in India has been often allegorized as either a powerful maternal force or as the site of sexual enticement and ultimate seduction. The binary woman/nature has been pitted against that of man/culture, creating a dichotomy that entangles the destiny of Indian women to that of Indian natural resources, both downgraded by patriarchal customary laws and an increasingly exploitative society.

This article takes into exam the play Purdah (1993) by playwright Ismail Mahomed, a Pakistani writer and director born in Johannesburg (29 May 1959) who has been active on the theatre scene in South Africa for the last thirty years. Purdah 1 is a one-woman stage performance that addresses the issue of seclusion and subjugation of the 'Muslim Indian' women of Lenasia, the neighbourhood of Johannesburg which, during the apartheid regime, was devised as a ghetto for the Indian community. Narrating the story of Ayesha, a young girl subjected to the customary practices of her community, I argue that the play-as an instance of 'issue theatre'-creates a venue for discussing the seclusion of women in purdah not just as a curtailing of freedom and a breach of human rights, but also as a psychological form of 'colonisation of the mind' that impinges on the development of woman's psyche and impedes the act of 'creation', in the double meaning of artistic 'creativity' (poiesis) and 'fabrication' of subjectivity.

Published in: Samyukta: A Journal of Women’s Studies (ISSN: 2393-80132)

The chapter is part of a book edited by Gayatri Devi and Najat Rahman titled Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema (Wayne University Press, 2014)

«Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema explores what humor theorists have identified as an "emancipatory," "liberatory," even "revolutionary" function to humor. Among the questions contributors ask are: How does Middle Eastern cinema and media highlight the stakes and place of humor in art and in life? What is its relation to the political? Can humor in cinematic art be emancipatory? What are its limits for its intervention or transformation? Contributors examine the region’s masterful auteurs, such as Abbas Kiarostami, Youssef Chahine, and Elia Suleiman and cover a range of cinematic settings, including Egypt, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. They also trace diasporic issues in the distinctive cinema of India and Pakistan.»

See http://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/humor-middle-eastern-cinema

LIMINAL GAZES: REFLECTIONS ON TIBETAN DIASPORIC CINEMA Mara Matta Créer, c'est aussi donner une forme à son destin. Albert Camus One of the main difficulties when we approach the ongoing debate on the issue of Tibet in the frame of contemporary world dynamics is ...

In May 2003 I heard that a documentary was being made about the famous Tibetan monk Gendun Choephel (in Tibetan, dGe 'dun Chos 'phel). I was in Dharamsala, India, interviewing Tibetan filmmakers who were producing the first Tibetan feature films to challenge the stereotyped ...