ILHAM Conversations

PROGRAMMES / ILHAM CONVERSATIONS

FILM: Chemman Chaalai (The Gravel Road)
by Deepak Kumaran Menon

DATE: 14 JANUARY 2017
TIME: 3:00 PM

Join us at a special screening of The Gravel Road. A drama set in the 1960s in a rubber estate in Malaysia, The Gravel Road revolves around the story of Shantha who lives in an estate, where higher education for women is near impossible. Shantha aspires to leave the estate and further her studies.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Deepak Kumaran Menon

“The Gravel Road is an equally rare instance of Tamil- language Malaysian  fllmmaking. At once brooding and beautifully shot mainly in moonlit forest groves and lonely, muddy lanes, Menon’s story (from a screenplay by his mother) about a teenage girl’s determination to stay in school despite her family’s desire that she upholds tradition and surrender to a life of menial day work, takes equal inspiration from Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy and Malcolm X’s assertion that a race, like an individual, can only  find fulllment through confidence, talent, and an unwavering belief in itself.”—Chuck Stephens, The San Francisco Bay Guardian