Beyond Partition

A Hima Films production for South Asian Cinema Foundation (SACF)
Year: 2006
Duration: 1:05:16
Narration: George Arney
Music: Madan Gopal Singh
Script: Kusum Pant Joshi & Lalit Mohan Joshi
Executive Producer: Imo Singh
Producer & Director: Lalit Mohan Joshi

Beyond Partition (2006) reflects South Asian filmmakers’ take on the Partition of India (1947). Shot for over a year, this path-breaking documentary has taken into its ambit, relevant films that emerged not only from India, but also from Pakistan, Bangladesh and the UK.

A Lalit Mohan Joshi film, Beyond Partition explores the trauma of Partition and how it impacted on filmmakers from the Indian subcontinent. Renowned filmmakers, Gulzar and Govind Nihalani reflect on the communal violence they witnessed. Cinema veteran M.S. Sathyu and celebrated script writer Shama Zaidi question the very idea behind the division, while Pakistani filmmaker Sabiha Sumar focuses on some other powerful forces that generated the demand for Pakistan.

Views on Beyond Partition

 ” ‘Beyond Partition’ has a quiet tone, even a compassionate look, even though the film material dealing with the communal divide and Partition has an inevitably brutal texture… Here is a well-cultured film, timely too, for now and for the future.”
– Prof. Satish Bahadur

 “It is a dispassionate view – important, if we have to shed the burden of bitterness that people in both nations have carried since Independence.”
– Shyam Benegal

 “It is an important work, and certainly lays the foundation for a deeper study on how Partition affected the portrayal of Muslims in Indian cinema”
– Deepa Gahlot in DNA Mumbai

 “Lalit Mohan Joshi’s searing documentary ‘Beyond Partition’ examines the context and subtext of this trauma which, we, as a people, are grappling with some degree of objectivity only in the past few years.”
– Maithili Rao, Film Critic

 “The film needs to be shown extensively in various national and international forums to generate discussions on the need for nations divided by colonial powers to come together and adjust themselves for a peaceful co-existence.”
– P.K.Nair, Film Archivist