Moving to the City

A Cinema Screening, an Interdisciplinary Discussion on Gender and Labor, and two complementary performances on the occasion of Women’s History Month curated by Samata Biswas.

A three-day exploration of the transformative power of women’s migration to Kolkata. By juxtaposing a contemporary cinematic reimagining of queer resistance with the historical reality of women’s labor, it is aimed to trace how "moving to the city" has been both a desperate fight for survival and a radical act of economic, social and spatial restructuring. With echos of voices from historical and contemporary autobiographies and memoirs, and a theatrical performance in which two young women, gender emerges as that which both shapes and is shaped by the city.

© Samata Biswas

Samata Biswas teaches English at the Sanskrit College and University. She is a media activist and author interested in issues of gender, caste, migration and popular culture. Samata is the co-editor of Situating Social Media: Gender, Caste, Protest, Solidarity and multiple special issues of international journals. She is the book editor of Refugee Watch: A South Asian Journal of Forced Migration and a member of the editorial collective of the blog Refugee Watch Online. Samata has recently started to create physical media and also produce independent cinema, the first one being Friends of Jilipibala.