Remembrance of Things Present
Director: Chandra Siddan

Year: 2007
Genre: Feature-Length Documentary
Running Time: 80 Mintutes
Language: English and Kannada with English Subtitle
Country: Canada and India
Format: Digibeta


How to deal with a marriage arranged when one was a child of twelve?

After years of nomadic life abroad, Chandra Siddan, a Canadian immigrant, returns to India's software capital, Bangalore,India with this matter weighing on her mind. Long divorced and newly remarried, she confronts her parents, relatives, family friends and ex-husband with her lost childhood. Was she forced into her early marriage because of her own dysfunctional family or is it the product of deeply patriarchal Indian culture? A searing insight into the shifting spaces for women in rapidly changing modern India, Remembrance of Things Presentoffers a sharp view of how little Bangalore's Hindu middle class has changed despite the software boom. Simultaneously a family drama and a social history Remembrance of Things Present also theorizes Chandra's and other women's past and present to see global female migrant labour as an anti-odyssey, a journey without a return."

What are the answers to the whys and what-ifs of one personal history in a context of general female disempowerment? How to resolve the key conflict of a displaced life after years of nomadic life abroad? Chandra Siddan, a Canadian immigrant, returns to Bangalore, India after 12 years’ absence with these questions.

Long divorced and newly remarried she enquires into the reasons for her early first marriage arranged in the mid 70s by her Hindu urban middle class family and confronts her parents and relatives with her lost childhood while also presenting them her new husband.

Reuniting with her daughter, Smruthi, (now in her twenties) Chandra finds her refreshingly liberated. But the life of her parents’ teenage servant, Sudha, shows that that the past is anything but over.

Simultaneously a family drama and a social history, Remembrance of Things Present rejects a reactionary notion of 'home' and theorizes global female migrant labour as an anti-odyssey, a journey without a return.

Showtime(s):

Thu., August 9th 2007 @ 7:30 pm
NFB Mediatheque: John Spotton Theatre
150 John St. Toronto, Ont. M5V 3C3