Screening: Partition

SALT Beyoğlu, Walk-in Cinema

Partition (1987)
Director: Ken McMullen
Writers: Tariq Ali and Ken McMullen
English without subtitles

A brilliantly executed and intense drama based around the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 and the transfer of power from British to Indian hands. Ken McMullen’s film focuses on the historical footnote that inmates of lunatic asylums were also transferred - Muslims to asylums in Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan to India. The film is set in both an asylum and in the conference rooms where officials draw the new border. The same actors play both the roles of the officials and the inmates of the asylum, with events in the asylum mirroring the actions of the ruling order.

The screening is organized in the context of the exhibition 1+8 at SALT Galata.