Description:

Online screening of Majdhar followed by a pre-recorded discussion with filmmaker Ahmed Jamal of the Retake Film and Video Collective

Majdhar
(Ahmed Alauddin Jamal, 1984, UK, 78 min)

Starting at 7 PM Central Time on January 28, MAJDHAR will be available to watch via Eventive through January 31st. Free and open to all with RSVP

About the film:

This groundbreaking drama was among the first to bring the inner lives and struggles of South Asian communities to popular audiences in the UK. With sensitivity and wry humor, Majdhar tells the story of Fauzia (Rita Wolf), a Pakistani woman struggling to build a life for herself in London after her arranged marriage falls apart. Produced by the Retake Film and Video Collective, the first all-Asian organization to emerge during the fertile “workshop era” of British collaborative independent filmmaking, Majdhar was broadcast on the BBC’s Channel 4 in 1984–a watershed moment in diasporic cinema that paved the way for later broadcasts like Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Launderette (1985) and the Black Audio Film Collective’s Handsworth Songs (1986).

The Block’s presentation of Majdhar will feature a pre-recorded discussion with director and Retake Film and Video Collective co-founder Ahmed Alauddin Jamal. The conversation will be moderated by Swagato Chakravorty, a doctoral candidate in Film Studies and Art History at Yale University, who will also provide an introduction to the film.

This program is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.