Above: Image provided courtesy - SikhMuseum.com
Film/Stage
A Prisoner's Song - Selected Best Film at Spinning Wheel 2009
NEWS REPORT
The Seventh Annual Spinning Wheel Film Festival & Art Expo - which concluded late Sunday, September 27, 2009 - screened 27 films out of a total of 145 they considered for inclusion in this year's festival. The films were screened over the course of three days of the festival.
This morning, the Festival's Board of Trustees have announced the BEST PICTURE OF SWFF 2009 to be "A Prisoner's Song", directed by Los Angeles filmmaker Michael Singh.
The screening of the film in Toronto was its Canadian premiere ... the film is now expected to join the festival circuit shortly, as will a number of other excellent films which were also premiered here this year.
Notably, Michael Singh received his first ‘break‘ at the inaugural Spinning Wheel in Toronto in 2003. All his earlier works have been introduced by the Toronto Spinning Wheel for the first time at its previous festivals.
"A Prisoner's Song", a 20 minute documentary, tells the story of an obscure audio recording made of a Sikh Prisoner of War - Mal Singh - in Germany during the First World War.
This recording on acetate was discovered by German fillmaker Philip Scheffner in 2007, and forms the starting point of a review of the extraordinary role of Sikh soldiers in defending civilization, and the manner in which both the British and the Indian governments have handled their obligations to date towards these heroes in terms of the military pensions due to them as a result of their service and sacrifices.
　
September 28, 2009
Conversation about this article
1: I.J. Singh (New York, U.S.A.), September 28, 2009, 1:01 PM.
A journey through time. Truly, a moving experience, worth watching. I guarantee his words will leave no one unmoved; they will melt a stone. And then the injustice of it all: Mal Singh's long and lonely quest for compensation that was due him and his family.
2: Arunjit Qaumi (Brampton, Ontario, Canada), September 28, 2009, 4:56 PM.
A soldier simply serves, simply sacrifices, simply obeys the call of motherland, simply lays down his life, simply expects his countrymen to take care of his legacy and his family's needs once he is no more ... and the politicians and governments simply IGNORE THEM. This is the gravest injustice to an extraordinary service.
3: Simrat Sahota (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), November 10, 2009, 9:12 PM.
Where can I watch this film?