Yearly Archives: 2006

The view from the seventh floor is dazzling – sunset behind the Washington Memorial, water shimmering around Jefferson, city lights coming alive. I am looking out from the City View Room in a building at George Washington University, where we are about to hold the DC premiere of Divided We Fall, our last screening of the calendar year, hosted by the GW Sikh Student Association and the Smithsonion Asian Pacific

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Lieutenant Governor CRUZ BUSTAMANTE hosted the formal California premiere of Divided We Fall a few steps away from our state capitol tonight. Beneath the great dome of the Secretary of State building, hundreds of people mingled, holding plates of Indian food, waiting for the doors to open for the premiere. The Lieutenant Governor came to welcome us and express his excitement about the film. (Spot us in the crowd…)

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It was like coming home. Our San Francisco premiere at the Third I Film Festival was our first screening in California, and looking out into the packed audience in the city’s famous Roxie Theater, I was overwhelmed by the image of my parents, cousins, friends, professors, interviewees, and strangers standing up together to applaud our film at the end. It was our fifth standing ovation – and the tears couldn’t help but come.… Continue Reading

Unlike most Sikh Americans my age, I never spent my summers at Sikh camps as a kid or attended Sikh youth conferences when I got older. As a third-generation Sikh American (my family has lived on the same plot of California farmland for nearly a hundred years), I had a very American name and couldn’t speak Punjabi well. So I grew up on the edges of the Sikh community. I always felt… Continue Reading

This week, the whirlwind took us to Illinois on our first state-wide university tour: first to Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington (pictured), then to Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and finally to the University of Illinois, Chicago.

On Friday October 27, we arrived at Wesleyan University for the Illinois premiere of Divided We Fall. We were immediately embraced by Dr. Narendra Jaggi, the main force behind our university tour, and

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On October 17, 18, and 19, the “Women in Religion in the 21st Century” conference was held at the Interchurch Center in Manhattan. It was a gathering of academics and religious practitioners from around the country in a rich three days of panels, workshops, and films exploring faith, feminism, and “faith-fueled activism.” On each day of the conference, I was asked to speak from a different Sikh perspective: first as a Sikh filmmaker,… Continue Reading

After premiering in Phoenix and New York, we made our BOSTON PREMIERE at Tufts University on October 25, hosted by the Asian American Center. It was a full audience once again, but this time, it was made up mostly of college students, many of whom experienced 9/11 as freshmen in high school. Linell Yugawa, our gracious host and director of the Asian American Center, introduced us. We introduced Divided We… Continue Reading

A few days after our world premiere in Phoenix, we headed east for our New York premiere at the beautiful Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan as part of the Sikh Arts and Film Festival. We arrived early to wander the sixth floor of the museum and admire the New York Times-acclaimed Sikh art exhibit “I See No Stranger“ – a breathtaking presentation of early Sikh devotional art emphasizing Guru Nanak’s… Continue Reading

There was a red carpet. Four hundred fifty people. Press cameras. Hot food. Banners that read “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” A whirl of conversation that settled when the film began. And a standing ovation when it ended. It was the night of our world premiere in Phoenix, Arizona, and it officially launched Divided We Fall into the world.

The premiere was held on the eve of the five-year… Continue Reading

The film is done. Completely done. Finished. (Here it is on the big screen.) And now we enter the world…

Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath will make its World Premiere on the eve of the five-year memorial of Balbir Sodhi’s murder, the first “retribution” murder in the aftermath of 9/11. On Thursday, September 14, the Phoenix Sikh community will host the event in memory of Sodhi and all hate crimes victims.… Continue Reading