The UC Davis Middle East/South Asia Studies Program presents the India at the Crossroads: India Film Festival 2026. The India at the Crossroads: India Film Festival will feature Anand Patwardhan, an Indian documentary filmmaker.
Event Date(s) and Time(s):
Friday, February 20, 2026 | 6:30PM to 9:00PM (Film Screening: A Time to Rise and In the Name of God (Ram ke Nam))
Event Location: Cruess Theater 1003, 375 California Ave, Davis 95616
About the Filmmaker:
Anand Patwardhan has been making socio-political documentaries for over five decades pursuing diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Anand who successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court.
Anand received a B.A. in English Literature from Bombay University in 1970, won scholarships to get another B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University in 1972 and a Master’s degree in Communications from McGill University in 1982.
Anand has been an activist ever since he was a student — having participated in the anti-Vietnam War movement; being a volunteer in Caesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers Union; working in a rural development and education project in central India; in the Bihar anti-corruption movement in 1974-75 and in the civil liberties and democratic rights movement during and after the 1975-77 Emergency. Since then he has been active in movements for housing rights of the urban poor, for communal harmony and participated in movements against unjust, unsustainable development, militarism and nuclear nationalism. He describes himself as “a non-serious human being forced by circumstances to make serious films”.
About the Film(s):
A Time to Rise
On April 6, 1980, the Canadian Farmworkers Union came into existence. This film documents the conditions among Chinese and East Indian immigrant workers in British Columbia that provoked the formation of the union, and the response of growers and labor contractors to the threat of unionization. Made over a period of two years, the film is eloquent testimony to the progress of the workers’ movement from the first stirrings of militancy to the energetic canvassing of union members.
In the Name of God (Ram ke Nam)
Since gaining independence in 1947, India has been a secular state. But now, as religious fundamentalism grips much of India's population, the greatest danger to the nation's extremely strained social fabric may come not from Sikh or Muslim separatists, but from Hindu fundamentalists who are appealing to the 83% Hindu majority to redefine India as a Hindu nation.
This event is sponsored and supported by: UC Davis Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, UC Davis Department of History, UC Davis Department of Religion, Culture, and Society, UC Davis Cultural Studies Graduate Group, UC Davis Human Rights Studies, and the Stanford Center for South Asia Global Studies.
