From Shadows to the Stars

Abstract

"Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being alive. 'From shadows to the stars." This is an excerpt from Rohith Vemula's suicide letter. Rohith killed himself due to the institutional harassment he faced for being a vocal and a politically active Dalit student. His death caused a wave of protests across India. The state tried to and succeeded in suppressing many of them. Among the events the state suppressed was a candlelight vigil organised for him in Delhi. Attending this vigil, I started recording some sounds and ended up making a filmic piece, Special Service. This article is a reflection on making the work, contextualising it with the sequence of events around it.

Keywords

• anti-caste protest
• dalit movement
• indian protests
• filming protests
• observational cinema