Bidesia in Bombay @ Issues Contents

Surabhi Sharma is a film maker. She studied film direction at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and made her first film in 2001. Jari Mari: Of Cloth and Other Stories is a feature length documentary film that seeks to understand the process of ‘informalisation’ of Mumbai’s workforce, and focuses on the lives and work of women in the extensive but largely invisible garment industry. Her second film, Aamakaar (The Turtlepeople), completed in 2003, is the story of a fishing village community’s struggle to retain control over its local natural resources. The third film, Above the Din of Sewing Machines (2004) portrays the lives of women in Bangalore’s garment industry. Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean, her fourth film was completed in 2007. Last year she made her fifth film – Pregnancy, Prescriptions and Protocol. This film documents a remarkable community health programme run by a hospital in a tribal area in south Gujarat, India.