Sikh Matron
- Kinver
- 1985-10-13
An Asian woman engages her inner goddess to create a stunning oasis in a grey tower block.
A rhythmic beat punctuates a solitary Asian woman's life as she engages her inner goddess to turn trash into treasure. She creates a stunning oasis in a grey tower block, challenging daily life on the estate, and is confronted by a hostile resident. Played by real life artist and activist Sheba Chhachhi, this solitary figure reveals her inner conflicts through her recycled artworks, which becomes a metaphor for radical self-renewal.
Why is she living on her own? Is she a divorcee or a widow? Where did she learn these skills and does she even eat? The tiny council flat is transformed into a gallery for her personal journey. Her inner peace and conflicts, played out through the canvas of her present life and a past that is only glimpsed at in the many artefacts within this most private of spaces.
From local news to feature film, through home movies and TV documentaries, this collection showcases South Asian Britons in front of and behind the camera. The contribution of colonial troops is illuminated through the earliest newsreels, while hardhitting current affairs programmes highlight the struggles faced in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond. Public information films produced for South Asian audiences feature alongside Hindi-language films made in Britain and interviews with prominent Asian-British figures. A bold wave of British Asian filmmaking in the 1990s is represented through early works by the likes of Gurinder Chadha and Asif Kapadia.