Mather House presents a screening of the award-winning short film Sisak, followed by a panel discussion with the director, Faraz Ansari, writer-storyteller Neha Rayamahji, and performer-professor Kareem Khubchandani. The event will be hosted in Mather's Senior Common Room on Friday, February 2nd. Come by 7:30 for Indian snacks. We'll start the screening at 8 pm, and the panel discussion will follow

Set in the fast-paced environs of the usually bustling Mumbai local train system, Sisak details a romance that develops slowly and intoxicatingly, nestled in the silences and quiet comforts of the end-of-day train journeys between two men. A return to the unspoken, unsaid and universal expressions of love on the path of subtlety and humanity, Sisak is the result of the belief that if love knows no bounds, it need not be bound with words, either."

Panelist bios:

Neha Rayamajhi is a social worker, storyteller, and a Pisces. She was born and raised in Nepal and moved to the U.S. alone at the age of eighteen. Since then, she has lived in North Carolina, Niger, Texas, and Oregon. Boston is the tenth city she has called home. Neha’s values revolve around the politics of decolonization, the power of turmeric, and in Teju Cole’s words “Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. On the best days, all three.”

Kareem Khubchandani is the Mellon Bridge Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Drama & Dance and the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Tufts University. His research, performance, and teaching interests include dance studies, queer nightlife, South Asian diaspora, global queer politics, performance ethnography, critical race studies, and drag.

When not working behind the camera, Faraz Arif Ansari conducts cinema and theatre sessions for the underprivileged children across the slums in Mumbai and trains them to write screenplays and direct their own short films along with film appreciation sessions. Faraz also runs a charitable initiative called ‘Gift A Meal’ which works at the grassroots level and provides meals to the street children across Mumbai & Delhi.