Seated in a dark room lit by a single candle, Ishar Das Arora (the character is voiced by Indian actor Adil Hussain), an Indian Hindu who migrated from Pakistan to India and Iqbal-ud-din Ahmed (the voice behind this character is Pakistani actor Salman Shahid), a Pakistani Muslim who made the opposite journey, discuss memories from the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan while playing a board game.
"God was a little late that day," Ishar comments, as he recounts the chaotic mass migration after the Partition. This scene from Child of Empire (CoE) is haunting.
Memories of the Partition are revisited in CoE, a 17-minute-long animated virtual reality (VR) docu-drama 'experience' - Sparsh Ahuja (23) from Malviya Nagar, who is the co-director, says, "Film is not the best way to describe CoE. It is an experience" - that was screened at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
Real-life inspirations
CoE has been created using Virtual Reality (VR) by Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative, which was co-founded by Sparsh and Sam Dalrymple in 2018. Project Dastaan seeks to reconnect individuals who were displaced from their ancestral land during the 1947 Partition.
Over the course of this Project, the team conducted 30 interviews with individuals who had personally experienced the trauma of the Partition. Three selected interviews have served as inspirations behind two characters we 'meet' in CoE.
Ishar's character has been scripted keeping in mind the experiences of Sparsh's maternal...
Read Full Story: https://www.newindianexpress.com/lifestyle/tech/2022/may/04/revisiting-partition-in-a-virtual-world-2449538.html
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