University of Washington, Bothell – Monday, October 9th – 3:30 PM

BLOOD LEAVES ITS TRAIL: This film is an exploration of issues of violence and memory in Kashmir that enters the vexed political scenario in Kashmir through the lives of families of the victims of enforced disappearances.

Screening will take place in UW1-060 at the University of Washington, Bothell.

Blood Leaves its Trail, Iffat Fatima, 2015, Kashmiri, 93 min

Blood Leaves its Trail enters the vexed political scenario in Kashmir through the lives of families of the victims of enforced disappearances. The film is a non-sequential account of personal narratives and reminiscences ruptured by violence, undermined by erasure and over-ridden by official documents that challenge truth. Made over nine years, it explores memory as a mode of resistance, constantly confronting and morphing- from the personal to political, individual to collective. It looks at the ways in which those affected by violence have no choice but to remember.

Director Bio

Iffat Fatima is an independent documentary filmmaker and researcher from Kashmir, based in Delhi. Since 2006 she has worked in Kashmir on the issue of enforced disappearances, in collaboration with the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). This collective of family members of the victims of enforced disappearances in Kashmir campaigns for information on the whereabouts of their disappeared kin. In 2011, she made a short film Where Have You Hidden My New Crescent Moon on enforced disappearances. In 2004, she completed a Fellowship, Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and the Arts, at Brandeis University. In 2001, she was awarded the Asia Fellowship for her work in Sri Lanka, Inter-communal Relations and Education: The Sri Lankan Experience.Her films have been screened at important venues and film festivals in India and all over the world.

Press & Awards

Runner-up at Film South Asia (FSA) 2015