IVLP ALumni Voices: Teenaa Kaur Pasricha
by Lynare Robbins
In January 2020 national award winning Indian filmmaker and screenwriter, Teenaa Kaur Pasricha, visited Miami as part of an International Visitor Leadership Program on “Film as a Medium for Social Change,” sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and Cultural Vistas. Other American city stops for the program included Washington D.C., Chicago, Houston and Salt Lake City (during the Sundance Film Festival).
While in Miami, Teenaa and her fellow IVLP participants had the opportunity to volunteer for a day of service on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with City Year AmeriCorps at South Hialeah Elementary School. The group was also able to experience “Home Hospitality,” where local Miami residents involved with Global Ties Miami volunteer to host IVLP visitors in their homes for a meal. A professional meeting was scheduled for the visitors with Richard Freedberg, a “script doctor” for filmmakers in Miami who was a lecturer in Children’s Theater in the European Council of International Schools and an acting teacher at the National Theater School of India in New Delhi. The group also met with educators from the University of Miami in meetings arranged by University of Miami Communications Professor, Joseph B.Treaster, who also serves on the Board of Directors for Global Ties Miami and is the editor for onewater.org, the University of Miami’s digital environmental magazine, which focuses on the Worldwide Water Crisis. The arranged meetings included Dr. Sanjeev Chatterjee, a visual storyteller and an avid mentor to young change makers in the media and related fields who is currently a full professor at the University of Miami with appointments in the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media (primary), the Department of Journalism (secondary), who has served on the faculties of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change since 2006 and the Young India Fellowship since 2011; and Dr. Christina Lane, the Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media at the University of Miami where she oversees areas of film production, screenwriting, producing, interactive media, web design, games, and media studies. In addition to formal meetings, the IVLP visitors had the opportunity to meet and interact with local film industry at the FilmGate Miami Festival.
The group could not have left Miami without a visit to South Beach, where they experienced a walking tour of famous films shot on location in South Beach, such as: The Birdcage; the Bad Boys Trilogy, There’s Something About Mary; Ace Ventura: Pet Detective; The Assassination of Gianni Versace; and several old Frank Sinatra films. After the walking tour and a discussion on how film and social justice intersect, the group stopped on Lincoln Road and then ventured over to Miami’s “Little Havana” neighborhood for lunch at the legendary “Versailles Restaurant” where some of the best croquetas can be had along with a mouthful of cafe con leche and an earful of social justice discussions led by patrons mainly from Miami’s Cuban American community.
However, in less than two months after the IVLP group departed from Miami, COVID-19 would make its debut to the world causing quarantines, lockdowns, sickness and in some cases, fatalities. Teenaa describes what the experience of the pandemic has been like for her. “I am grateful to the Universe as I had travelled to the coastal village of Maharashtra, about 250 kilometers away from the hum- drum of the busy Mumbai city. So I was in a lockdown in a small village where I stayed with other people on a Ranch. We were growing our food, but also buying it from the village market.” She described the Sapna Ranch as being handmade with bamboo and wood. “People have volunteered to make it happen over a decade or so and it was spearheaded by one man who is the owner of the place but loves being in Nature.” Teenaa said that the villages in India are mostly a safe refuge. “Before this entire journey that I underwent, I had only prayed to Mother Nature to allow me to be in her lap where I can bask in the sunlight, breathe within the trees and enjoy the space in Forest. And voila, magic happened and I travelled to the forest, and then the lockdown happened that lasted 3 months and more.” Teenaa went on to ask thought provoking rhetorical questions such as, “Has anyone thought what is Mother nature trying to tell us? Why is there a New World Order being restored? What is the definition of development?”
As is the founder of Green Earth Pictures, and known for her documentary film “1984, When the Sun Didn’t Rise,” which won the National Film Award for Best Investigative Film in India in 2018, Teenaa says that she wonders if we (humanity) are all living in harmony with nature and all its living beings or are we selfishly burning down the forests to make malls, apartments and highways? 1984, When the Sun Didn’t Rise explores what disharmony with nature looks like as it portrays the 1984 Sikh Massacre, that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Ghandi by her Sikh bodyguards. The film focuses on the vulnerability and resilience of the widows whose husbands were killed during the event, who now live in Delhi’s, “Widow Colony.”
Other films by Teenaa include “The Woods Are Calling;” “Hola! The Mighty Colors;” “The Deer, Tree and Me;” and “In Symphony With Earth,” which was broadcasted on National Geographic. Much of the themes of her films revolve around the concept of respect for nature and sustainability. To this principle, Teenaa asks whether humankind is destroying other living beings including plants, trees, animals, insects and birds of their habitat. She says that she believes it is the reason why there are so many cyclones, natural calamities, and viruses striving in various parts of the world. “How many clothes did you wear in this lockdown? Is it time to rethink development?”Or should we start practicing sustainable lives.” As Teenaa points out, sustainability would mean growing more of our food, and not importing or exporting any produce, but consuming it within the local communities which would help to reduce carbon footprints. “Leading a simple, sustainable life in harmony with nature is the answer going forward.”
