Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

The anatomy of natural calamities

Susan Muthalaly

"Deconstructing Disasters," a travelling documentary film festival, screened in Chennai

CHENNAI: Long after the tsunami, well after the flood victims have managed a makeshift home, there are questions left unanswered.

Why do the floods in Bihar that once left the soil fertile with silt never drain these days? What about compensation for landless labour, who lost their livelihoods when the tsunami salinated the fields? These are some of the issues tackled in the documentaries screened as part of "Deconstructing Disasters," a travelling documentary film festival in Chennai on October 22-23.

Organised by indiadisasters.org, the films are also being screened in Nagapattinam, Thiruvananthapuram, Bangalore and Kanyakumari. There will be a screening on the beaches of some tsunami-affected areas in an attempt to reach the actual victims of the natural disaster. Perhaps the most effective of the selection screened at Don Bosco Institute of Communication Arts on Saturday, Waves After the Waves. The pint-sized protagonists are full of beans, singing, dancing and painting with unflagging enthusiasm. But they all have stories to tell, the horror of which is underlined by the juxtaposition of the matter-of-fact way in which they relate incidents of death and personal loss. At one point, the children are asked to paint on a large canvas spread out before them. One boy paints a small blotch that he describes as his friend Anand who died in the tsunami.

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