Kannan Arunasalam
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kamalakkannan.bsky.social
Kannan Arunasalam
@kamalakkannan.bsky.social
190 followers 130 following 82 posts
British–Tamil filmmaker. New feature docs: ‘Republic of Amnesia’ & ‘Possible Landscapes’ Oxford | Cambridge | Cornell Glasgow — Colombo — Jaffna
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At Glasgow’s GOMA, having seen Hock Aun Teh’s artist’s talk, energetic and inspiring
The inimitable Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor (1975)
What a legend. Amazing movies like Three Days of the Condor (1975) and of course, Sundance
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
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
#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
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.
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.”
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
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
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.
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
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.
Within hours, a Sinhalese mob attacked the protestors as police stood by. My uncle was beaten up and thrown into the Beira Lake.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
A boy carries a coconut tree branch through the bustle of Jaffna’s dusty streets. These young Tamil boys are performing kavadi — a Hindu rite of passage defined by sacrifice, devotion and penance #jaffna #streets