There will be a public screening of a feature film from the Auroville Film Festival 2022. It will be screened on Thursday, June 09 at Cinema Paradiso, Town Hall from 8pm onwards.
MOTI BAGH
2019, India, Documentary, Hindi, 1hr
83 year old Vidyadutt Sharma holds the record for growing the heaviest radish in India, weighing 23 kgs. He now aims to beat the world record of 31kgs.
Over the last five decades, he has built up Moti Bagh, his 5 acre farm, in a small Himalayan village in northern India. Around him lie 7000 ghost villages, left to die, with no one to till the land – a chilling testimony to large scale migration by locals in search of employment in the cities.
With no manpower at their disposal, the few locals employ Nepali labor. But there is unease because of this dependence and the growing influence of the Nepalis. As market forces exert pressure, family dynamics also change. Vidyadutt’s journalist son, Tribhuvan, lives and works in Pauri, a large town 35kms from Moti Bagh. His two children wish to chase their own dreams in the metros.
Vidyadutt Sharma, farmer, activist and poet, chronicles the changing landscape in verses of resistance. As he and Ram Singh, his Nepali farmhand, plough the fields to keep a dream called Moti Bagh alive, we wonder if it will ever return to its old glory.
Screenings/ Awards:
- Oscar Entry nominated 2019,
- India Best Long Doc, Idsffk, Kerala 2019
- Special Jury Mention, Cms Vatavaran 2019.
Director, Writer: Nirmal Chander Dandriyal
Producer: Psbt / Doordarshan
Cast: Vidyadutt Sharma
