The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

44 Christian and Sikh communities that are still carried in the region today. Large-scale border crossings and emigration occurred in attempts to flee conflict, intolerance and economic hardship, and individual and collective identities were subject to media and political manipulation. East Pakistan, which would become Bangladesh after the Liberation War of 1971, also suffered economically and culturally when it was separated from the rest of Bengal, and the exodus to the wealthy emirates of the Persian Gulf that began at this time continues today. Filmmakers working in India after partition have attempted to address what had been repressed through fear of further conflict. Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara (The Cloud-Capped Star) 1960 is considered one of the most important cinematic statements of its time. Set amongst a refugee community in post-partition Bengal, it is a compassionate study of dislocation and poverty experienced by a family uprooted from their ancestral home. Sanjay Kak and Sarah Singh belong to a younger generation of documentary filmmakers who offer insights into the continuing effects of partition and the possibility of transcending the divisions created. In Jashn-e-Azadi (How We Celebrate Freedom) 2007, Kak examines two decades of conflict in the disputed territories of Jammu and Kashmir and the differing interpretations of azadi (freedom) throughout the Kashmir valley. By reflecting on first-person testimonies, Singh’s The Sky Below 2007 asks whether the shared cultural roots of India and Pakistan may bring lasting peace between them in the future. Similarly, in the predominantly Buddhist country of Sri Lanka, filmmakers have examined the 26 years of civil war between the Sinhala majority and Tamil minority, and the continuing struggle for an independent Tamil state. 1 In Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land) 2005 and Ahasin Wetei (Between Two Worlds) 2009, Vimukthi Jayasundara expresses a pervasive ambivalence felt in Sri Lanka. The films respectively investigate a period of ceasefire in 2001, and the defeat of the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan military in May 2009, both signalling the end, if only temporarily, of fighting throughout the country. 2 Jayasundara shows a nation suspended in a state of being without war and without peace and, like his contemporaries Asoka Handagama, Dharmasena