Author | Lightnews

Reposted by Kannan Arunasalam

Vindhya Buthpitiya @vindi-b.bsky.social · 14d

my book (!) ‘A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka’ encompassing a decade of research on Tamil photographic practices set against a backdrop of ethno/nationalist conflict & the island’s turbulent post/war out Spring 26 uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295...

A Volatile Picture

uwapress.uw.edu

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · 18m

Thinking back to a wonderful time at the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, where ‘Possible Landscapes’ was in competition for best documentary feature. Possible Landscapes (2025, 105 mins, US) is an exploration of intergenerational lived experience of Caribbean environments, filmed over two seasons.

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Sep 22

At Glasgow’s GOMA, having seen Hock Aun Teh’s artist’s talk, energetic and inspiring

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Sep 17

The inimitable Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor (1975)

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Sep 17

What a legend. Amazing movies like Three Days of the Condor (1975) and of course, Sundance

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Aug 30

I love this old photograph of my father: with a mango leaf, Appa guides my brother’s hand across grains of rice — the passing of knowledge through simple gestures. I don’t know who took the picture (the framing is beautiful), but it was most likely with Appa’s Minolta, which he carried everywhere

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jul 31

The BlackStar festival was “leaning into the moment” by highlighting films about legacy and the power of community building, as well as labour and economics” www.theguardian.com/culture/2025... #CinemaForLiberation #BSFF25

The ‘Black Sundance’ honoring film-makers of color and focusing on community building

BlackStar Film Festival is ‘leaning into the moment’ with films defying genres and centering solidarity among groups

www.theguardian.com

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jul 31

We’re proud to partner with BlackStar fest, a space for “politically engaged, aesthetically bold, and community-rooted cinema,” for the world premiere of ‘Possible Landscapes’.

Sunday, August 3rd 3:00pm
Suzanne Roberts Theatre, Philadelphia

#CinemaForLiberation
#BSFF25

Reposted by Kannan Arunasalam

The Wiener Holocaust Library @wienerlibrary.bsky.social · Jul 12

#OnThisDay in 1936 #Sachsenhausen concentration camp was established in Oranienburg to hold political prisoners. In this image, prisoners perform forced labour at the camp

Find out more about the development of SS camps via #TheHolocaustExplained buff.ly/rZ5IJ8J

A black and white photograph of prisoners in Sachsenhausen, dressed in striped uniforms, performing manual labour in a trench

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jul 12

Skarsgård’s comments about Bergman came up in the context of von Trier, “Why is one director persona non grata and another not?” And it’s also important to recognize the full context that Bergman’s Nazi sympathies in his youth are something he strongly turned against.

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jul 12

The director also acknowledged his support for Nazism in his own 1987 memoir, “The Magic Lantern,” where he wrote, “For many years, I was on Hitler’s side, delighted by his success and saddened by his defeats.”

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jul 12

Was Ingmar Bergman Really a Nazi? Stellan Skarsgård Saying the Director ‘Cried When Hitler Died’ Reopens the Issue www.indiewire.com/news/general...

Was Ingmar Bergman Really a Nazi? Stellan Skarsgård Saying the Director ‘Cried When Hitler Died’ Reopens the Issue

Was Ingmar Bergman a Nazi supporter? Stellan Skarsgard saying the director ‘cried when Hitler died’ reopens issue. We explain the evidence.

www.indiewire.com

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jul 6

My earliest short films, "Kerosene" (2011) and "Paper" (2011) are screening at the beautiful Jaipur Centre for Art as part of its film programme, Artist’s Cinema #jaffna #jaipur

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jun 27

This contradiction reveals a disturbing pattern of selective enforcement showing who may express solidarity and whose suffering merits acknowledgment — essential reading — ‘Sri Lanka’s Selective Solidarities’ by Thiruni Kelegama @jamhoor.org

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jun 27

The tactics are structurally identical: land seizure, demographic engineering, militarised control, and cultural erasure—the very practices denounced in Palestine—are actively deployed against Tamil communities in Sri Lanka’s North and East.

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jun 27

The tactics are structurally identical: land seizure, demographic engineering, militarised control, and cultural erasure—the very practices denounced in Palestine—are actively deployed against Tamil communities in Sri Lanka’s North and East

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jun 26

The plaque lists his accomplishments: from the so-called “Indian Mutiny” and the “Umbeyla Campaign” to the “Abyssinia Expedition,” the “Lushai Rising,” and assorted colonial adventures across Afghanistan, Burma, and South Africa.

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jun 11

Within hours, a Sinhalese mob attacked the protestors as police stood by. My uncle was beaten up and thrown into the Beira Lake.

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Jun 11

Among them sat my uncle, V. N. Navaratnam—our “MP Periappa” from Chavakachcheri—protesting a law that erased Tamil as an official language: arguably the Original Sin of Sri Lanka’s post-independence history.

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · May 29

It’s a damning portrait of a corrosive political culture and a family driven by ambition. At its heart, the book reveals a compromised White House inner circle, and a Democratic Party in denial. A reckoning is overdue.

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · May 19

Extract from ‘No Space for Memory? Monuments, Memorials and the Residues of the War in Sri Lanka's North' by Lia Kent. Photograph by Kanapathipillai Kumanan.

Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · May 19

As an act of solidarity with the war dead, missing and disappeared and their families to remember their losses, mothers cooked and collectively ate Mullivaikal kanji with their families and local communities even where bricks-and mortar memorials are and cemeteries are obstructed or destroyed.

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · May 13

This is as close to accountability as it gets for the Nazi-sympathising filmmaker—long shielded from scrutiny and now facing allegations of complicity in a 1939 massacre of Polish Jews in Końskie—as she finally faces her reckoning on screen www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ma...

Riefenstahl review – nauseating yet gripping story of Nazi poster woman

The only important woman in the Nazi movement entranced Hitler, directed Triumph of the Will – and spent the rest of her life alternately fearful and defiant

www.theguardian.com

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Kannan Arunasalam @kamalakkannan.bsky.social · Apr 8

We held a private screening of our new feature #documentary, ‘Possible Landscapes,’ (2025, 90 mins) at #CambridgeUniversity —where it received an enthusiastic response—followed by a wonderful dinner at Trinity College, with long term collaborator Dr Tao DuFour, Director MArch Programme #climate

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