Film ‘Begum Jaan’ star cast in city on April 14
Neeraj Bagga
Tribune News Service
Amritsar, April 10
The screening of star-studded ‘Begum Jaan’ in presence of Gauhar Khan, Pallavi Sharda, Mahesh Bhatt and Srijit Mukherji will be held at Cinepolis, Alpha One Mall Complex, here on April 14.
The Partition Museum, an initiative of The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, will organise the screening as a charity event as a part of its second major event of the Arts and Literature Festival of Amritsar (ALFA) 2017. The event will include an interaction session with the four celebrities.
The core of ‘Begum Jaan’ lies in the Partition and the displacement that led millions to lose their homes. This is the story of one of such homes.
The day will include a walk-through the Partition Museum, the film screening and discussion with Gauhar Khan, Pallavi Sharda, Mahesh Bhatt and Srijit Mukherji. It will be followed by a curated dinner with the stars, which will include some special dishes from the 1940s.
Begum Jaan is about a family’s fight to save their home due to the Radcliffe line. According to writer and director Srijit Mukherji, “At the behest of Lord Mountbatten, when the Radcliffe Commission shoddily drew the India-Pakistan border in just five weeks with no proper topographical or demographical study, it sometimes went right through forests, rivers, villages, towns and even houses. The movie is the story of one such house in Punjab and the fight put up by its matriarch Begum Jaan, who adamantly defies the order saying no government had the right to take away her home.”
Award-winning filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt has said, “We are honoured to be collaborating with the world’s first Partition Museum set up at Town Hall in Amritsar to screen this film since both museum and our movie aim to tell the story of what happened to ordinary people when this extraordinary political decision to draw a line dividing people was taken, that led to so many losing their homes.”
Kishwar Desai, the chair of The Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, noted that the Trust, a charitable NGO, was honoured to invite the Begum Jaan team to Amritsar. She informed that authors, poets, artistes, musicians, singers from across the world would also be invited to explore different facets of the Partition, and the important historical role of Punjab and Bengal.”
