WHEN THE TIDE GOES OUT

About the film

A generation of local cultural activists ruminate over their lives and activism in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland in Canada. The memories of intercommunity activism revolve around an episode of self-organizing by Punjabi Canadian farmworkers, mostly women. Reflection and introspection gradually unravel the structural reality of gender inequality reproducing itself in the activism spectrum. Unlike the visual archive of rallies and picket lines, the gendered experience of organizing did not lend itself to an image. The image forms tangible evidence four decades later, shaping the movement’s memory. What remains undocumented in the movement’s arts goes unrepresented in the movement’s memory.

About the director

Ajay Bhardwaj is a filmmaker and scholar from Delhi, presently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. His first independent documentary, 'Ek Minute Ka Maun' (1997) is on the martyrdom of Comrade Chandrashekhar Prasad, former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union. In his long stint as a documentary filmmaker, he explored the northwestern state of Punjab for a decade. This phase culminated in his Punjab trilogy – a set of documentaries, namely 'Kitte Mil Ve Mahi', 'Rabba Hun Ki Kariye' and 'Milangey Babey Ratan Di Mele Te' – located at the intersection of Dalit religiosity, performance traditions and memories of the partition of Punjab.