Congratulations to UT second year MFA student Chithra Jeyaram, the first recipient of the Dina Sherzer Scholarship Award for Social Awareness.She will receive $1500 to help fund her documentary film on the Tamils of Sri Lanka.
In one of the longest running civil wars of South Asia, the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka has been subject to massacre, coercion, abuse, violence and displacement by both the government and the separatist groups for nearly three decades. Yet this issue has received limited media attention compared to Darfur or that of Palestinians in Gaza. Lasantha Wickramatunga, a slain Sri Lankan Journalist said in his last published editorial essay, ““But there is a calling that is yet above high office, fame, lucre and security. It is the call of conscience.” Chithra pre-thesis film is a dedication to all those lives lost, displaced and scarred by the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
Chithra a second year MFA student, ventured into film making by accident. Her decision to fund a documentary project in South India in 2004 sowed the seed for a career in film. Growing up she was exposed to a multitude of societal problems like poverty, communal riots, gender issues, caste based discrimination, urban and rural divide, linguistic fanaticism and the first gulf war. She was appalled by the violence and human displacement spawned by religious, linguistic and ethnic fanaticism.
Filed under: News
