LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Anand Patwardhan
built 642 days ago
Respected documentarian Anand Patwardhan's two-part chronicle of the anti-nuclear weapons movement in India is a quiet, melancholy plea for an end to the perilous game of nuclear one-upmanship between India and Pakistan and, by extension, the world. India conducted its first underground nuclear test in 1974, at the Pokaran test site in the Rajasthan desert; the code phrase for success was "Buddha is smiling." read more
Source:
Anand Patwardhan is Executive Director of the Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), an autonomous organization in the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India. Prior to this, he was Professor and Head of the Shailesh J Mehta School of Management at IIT-Bombay. He ... holds an adjunct faculty position at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA.
Source:
Mention to anyone that the Mumbai-based director Anand Patwardhan has just completed a three-hour documentary on the anti-nuclear movement, and there is a look of incredulity. Can someone, in this age of sound bites, inflict three hours on viewers - and get away with it? That's longer than most feature films these days!
Source:
In the 1970s, Anand Patwardhan completed his studies in English literature at Bombay University and in sociology at Brandeis University in the United States. In 1982 he completed a degree in media studies at McGill University in Canada. During the course of his studies he became involved in protests against the Vietnam War, worked on development projects in Central India, and actively participated in community life. For almost thirty years Anand Patwardhan has made documentaries in which he deals with controversial themes from social and political life in contemporary India. A number of his films were deemed unfit to be broadcast by Indian State Television, a move which eventually became the subject of a court case. In the case, Anand Patwardhan succeeded in having the censorship measures against his documentary films removed.
Source:
Anand Patwardhan has been making political documentaries for nearly three decades pursuing diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Patwardhan who successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court. Patwardhan received a B.A. in English Literature from Bombay University in 1970, won a scholarship to get another B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1972 and earned a Master's degree in Communications from McGill University in 1982. Patwardhan has been an activist ever since he was a student – having participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement; being a volunteer in Caesar Chavez's United Farm Worker's Union; working in Kishore Bharati, a rural development and education project in central India; and participating in the Bihar anti-corruption movement in 1974-75 and in the civil liberties and democratic rights movement during and after the 1975-77 Emergency. Since then he has been active in movements for housing rights of the urban poor, for communal harmony and participated in movements against unjust, unsustainable development, miltarism and nuclear nationalism.
Source:
"As a child, Indian filmmaker Anand Patwardhan was immersed in the non-violent teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. With this perspective, Patwardhan takes a critical - and ironically humorous - documentary look at India and Pakistan's dangerous dance with jingoistic nuclear nationalism, and how this madness continues to thrive in the rest of the globe. With money that could build 15,000 badly needed primary health centers, India chooses to buy just one nuclear-tipped missile, a decision that many Indians laud with newfound pride."
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Anand Patwardhan