Official Selection
Art Divvy Film FestivalScreened at
British Film Institute, UKArnolfini Museum, UK
Partition Museum, India
San Francisco Asian Art Museum, USA
Seabirds
India/Pakistan | United Kingdom | 2022 | 7min | Animated Short | Colour
Screenwriter
Lost Migrations is a three-part animated series which tells the untold stories of the Partition through the voices of the colonised. Most of the literature and cultural exploration of Partition has focused on the division of the province of Punjab by British authorities in 1947. This project aims to showcase the diverse voices of the subcontinent in an engaging way, combining local artistic styles and traditions that celebrate the individuality of each community.
This episode shows the ripples of Partition far from the India-Pakistan borderlands, and its wider impact on mercantile communities in South-East Asia who were forced to choose between their ancestral land of India and other countries where they had lived for generations.
Over a conversation whilst cooking with her grandmother, eight-year-old Nithya learns of her family’s escape from Burma during World War II, and how new borders cut her family off from their childhood home in Rangoon. She realises that the family’s Chettiar cuisine has been the only constant in the story of intergenerational loss.
Weaving between close-cut visuals of cooking and Nithya’s imagination of the journey of her ancestors, Seabirds juxtaposes exile with childhood fantasy. The episode also combines the rich coastal imagery of South India with Burmese architectural design.
Stream on Nowness or MUBI
A film by Project Dastaan and Puffball Studios
DirectorSawera Jahan
ScreenwriterOmi Zola Gupta
Story bySam Dalrymple
Omi Zola Gupta
Saadia Gardezi
ProducersSam Dalrymple
Saadia Gardezi
Sparsh Ahuja
Rasti Farooq
CastKirtana Kumar as Umayal
Maaya Lakshmi Narrain as Nithya