New Delhi, August 25: India International Centre will organize a special screening of the 60-minute documentary film-MANIPUR SONG made by Pankaj Butalia in 2007 at its auditorium at 40, Max Muller Marg here on August 30 at 6.30 pm.

The filmmaker will introduce the film before screening and a discussion will be followed after the screening.

About the film, it says, " It has taken almost sixty years, but it is slowly being recognized that there is something radically wrong with India's Nationalistic project.

At a time when the boundaries of Nationalism are getting blurred the world over, the conflicts between mainstream Indian Nationalism and the various subnationalisms are reaching their crescendo.

MANIPUR SONG is an elegy to one such conflict".

It furthers states, " Manipur is wrecked by different conflicts.

On the one hand is the long standing unresolved struggle by the Meiteis, who dominate Manipur, against the of Manipur into the Indian state.

On the other hand there are internal conflicts � with the Naga populations wanting to opt out of the State and the Kukis on the warpath against not only the Nagas but also the Meiteis.

Compounding this complexity is a corrupt polity and a powerful drugs and guns mafia".

"In the absence of any reliable governance in the State, the gun has become the de facto governor.

There are more than twenty militant groups in the State � of various hues and allegiances � most at cross purposes with each other with each ruling in territory it controls.

The State is brutal in its response and uses extra judicial means to exercise control".

"So what happens to aspirations? To daily life? It all becomes a collateral of this violence.

MANIPUR SONG is an attempt to look at this collateral, it adds.

Born in 1950, Pankaj Butalia taught Economics in Delhi University before taking to making films.

At the University, he launched Celluloid, which was one of Delhi's oldest film societies.

Later, he was Secretary of the Federation of Film Societies of India.

His first film, WHEN HAMLET CAME TO MIZORAM was a documentary looked at the phenomenon of Shakespeare's Hamlet which becoming part of popular culture in Aizawl in the 1980s.His next documentary, MOKSHA (Salvation) , on the Bengali widows of Vrindavan won four major international awards.

In 1999, he made his first fiction film, KARVAAN (Shadows in the Dark), a look at post-partition Delhi, which starred Naseeruddin Shah and Kitu Gidwani.

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