Sparsh Ahuja is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist and National Geographic Explorer based in Melbourne.
His work has exhibited in venues such as The Smithsonian, Victoria & Albert and Asian Art Museums, and featured at Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, MUBI, The New Yorker, TIME, The BBC and Al Jazeera amongst others.
Lost Migrations is a three-part animated series which tells the untold stories of the Partition through the voices of the colonised. Most of the literature and cultural exploration of Partition has focused on the division of the province of Punjab by British authorities in 1947. This project aims to showcase the diverse voices of the subcontinent in an engaging way, combining local artistic styles and traditions that celebrate the individuality of each community.
This episode shows the ripples of Partition far from the India-Pakistan borderlands, and its wider impact on mercantile communities in South-East Asia who were forced to choose between their ancestral land of India and other countries where they had lived for generations.
Over a conversation whilst cooking with her grandmother, eight-year-old Nithya learns of her family’s escape from Burma during World War II, and how new borders cut her family off from their childhood home in Rangoon. She realises that the family’s Chettiar cuisine has been the only constant in the story of intergenerational loss.
Weaving between close-cut visuals of cooking and Nithya’s imagination of the journey of her ancestors, Seabirds juxtaposes exile with childhood fantasy. The episode also combines the rich coastal imagery of South India with Burmese architectural design.
World Premiere - BFI Southbank
STREAMING on MUBI and NOWNESS ASIA
Produced by Project Dastaan & Puffball Studios, Directed by Sawera Jahan
Lost Migrations produced in collaboration with Puffball Studios and Spitting Image Bangalore.