White Van Stories To Be Featured On Major Channels Across UK, US And Australia
By Team Whitevanstories
27 October, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Leena Manimekalai’s White Van Stories, a documentary on enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka with never-seen-before footage, is set to be featured on Channel Four, UK
CHENNAI, OCTOBER 28: Leena Manimekalai, a critically-acclaimed independent Indian film-maker, is set to feature exclusive material from her documentary feature White Van Stories that highlights enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka, on Channel Four in UK during the month of November 2013.
The special 12-minute cut will also be syndicated across United States and through CNN and ABC broadcasting networks and in Australia via the multilingual broadcaster - SBS.
The global broadcast coincides with the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo that has been highly criticized in the face of Sri Lanka’s ever-increasing human rights abuse cases.
The cut is based on a 2-hour documentary feature produced and directed by Leena Manimekalai that follows seven characters, covering a gamut of provinces and ethnicities, and the tragic unexplained disappearances of their loved ones in post-war Sri Lanka. The characters will also give audiences a stark glimpse at the characters’ resilience to find the disappeared as part of their continued fight for justice.
“White Van Stories tracks Sri Lanka's long history of unexplained disappearances in the 1980s during the armed revolt of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna(JVP), and later as the civil war intensified in the 1990s up to recent years,” said Leena Manimekalai. “The lives of the families of the disappeared across Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim ethnicities are portrayed,” she added.
The recent rally held in Jaffna and Colombo on 27th and 30th of August 2013 (International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances) during UNHRC High Commissioner, Ms. Navi Pillay’s visit to Sri Lanka is the centerpiece of the docu-feature as the characters were amongst the hundreds of families of the disappeared who had protested.
About Leena Manimekalai
Leena Manimekalai is an independent Filmmaker, Poet and an Actor. Her films, which include a dozen in genres of documentary, fiction and experimental visual poetry, have been recognized with avid participation and best film awards in many international and national film festivals. She is a published Poet with four anthologies and her literary contributions also have won her prestigious international awards. She has an EU Fellowship on Media & Conflict Resolution, a Commonwealth Fellowship on Women in Media and a Charles Wallace Fellowship on Visual Ethnography to her credits.
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