Once upon a time in the city of Lahore there was a quiltmaker. Her family were descended from Pakhiwas – gypsies of Punjab. The Pakhiwas were gleaners. They made everything they needed from what others threw away. Each year the quiltmaker would make a quilt using thrown away fabric and old clothes. On the day she finished sewing, she would wash the quilt and fling it over a wall to dry in the sun. Raised by the wind in all its bright colours, the quilt shouted to the city, “Here we are!”
In 2011 whilst conducting background research for my PhD project in Pakistan, I befriended Safia, who was living in a jhumpiri or tent, on the side of a street in Gulberg, Lahore. Over the following years I came to know her and her family, and their story. I began to make drawings and paintings, and film with the family whenever I was in Pakistan. Over years we collaborated, collecting footage for scenes that thickly describe their life, and making paintings that could be used to create animated videos of events that occurred and which for various reasons not be filmed. This collection of material is in post-production for a film project with the title, "The Tessellated Quilt".
Ralli Zabardast Heh/The Tessellated Quilt is an immersive experience of the world of Safia, the quiltmaker, Amanat her husband, and their six children. Safia and Amanat are descended from Punjabi and Sindhi gypsies - tribes that were disowned by the state at the time of Partition. The film, a collaboration between Safia's family and the director, observes the ways in which they are surviving on the streets of megacities such as Lahore in Pakistan, and questions their treatment as unwelcomed, often persecuted, and oppressed internal Indigenous refugees.
The quilts created by Safia represent an inherited cultural tradition through generations of women. The quilts distinguish her family, often take centre stage in their struggles for space, and form one of the leitmotifs in the film for piecing together and revealing the story of Safia and her family.
Safia’s people call themselves Pakhiwas. They descend from semi-nomadic tribes that prior to Partition roamed throughout Punjab and Sindh for thousands of years. Though not a minority in Pakistan, the Pakhiwas are its most exploited and marginalised people. On the fringes and wastelands of every town their jhumpiris or tent communities can be found for they are largely landless.
A goal with this film is to speak to universal issues of dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ through the lens of the particular situation of the Pakhiwas, by showing how they sustain life on the fringes through their culture and ingenuity as eco-designers. Like many tribal groups, their ways continue to be stigmatised as part of a larger and systemic movement of the part of the Pakistani elite and middle classes to suppress their native and human rights.
Spoken in Urdu and Punjabi, with english subtitles, the film looks to contribute to debates within and outside Pakistan concerning the right of semi-nomadic ethnic and tribal peoples as citizens, in ways that allow ethnocultural autonomy. Exposing the relationship between endemic racism, corruption, and oppression of the Pakhiwas, the idea is to contribute evidence and support to demands for radical shifts in Pakistani political policy that would facilitate empowerment, freedom, and betterment of circumstances for these peoples.
In 2011 whilst conducting background research for my PhD project in Pakistan, I befriended Safia, who was living in a jhumpiri or tent, on the side of a street in Gulberg, Lahore. Over the following years I came to know her and her family, and their story. I began to make drawings and paintings, and film with the family whenever I was in Pakistan. Over years we collaborated, collecting footage for scenes that thickly describe their life, and making paintings that could be used to create animated videos of events that occurred and which for various reasons not be filmed. This collection of material is in post-production for a film project with the title, "The Tessellated Quilt".
Ralli Zabardast Heh/The Tessellated Quilt is an immersive experience of the world of Safia, the quiltmaker, Amanat her husband, and their six children. Safia and Amanat are descended from Punjabi and Sindhi gypsies - tribes that were disowned by the state at the time of Partition. The film, a collaboration between Safia's family and the director, observes the ways in which they are surviving on the streets of megacities such as Lahore in Pakistan, and questions their treatment as unwelcomed, often persecuted, and oppressed internal Indigenous refugees.
The quilts created by Safia represent an inherited cultural tradition through generations of women. The quilts distinguish her family, often take centre stage in their struggles for space, and form one of the leitmotifs in the film for piecing together and revealing the story of Safia and her family.
Safia’s people call themselves Pakhiwas. They descend from semi-nomadic tribes that prior to Partition roamed throughout Punjab and Sindh for thousands of years. Though not a minority in Pakistan, the Pakhiwas are its most exploited and marginalised people. On the fringes and wastelands of every town their jhumpiris or tent communities can be found for they are largely landless.
A goal with this film is to speak to universal issues of dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ through the lens of the particular situation of the Pakhiwas, by showing how they sustain life on the fringes through their culture and ingenuity as eco-designers. Like many tribal groups, their ways continue to be stigmatised as part of a larger and systemic movement of the part of the Pakistani elite and middle classes to suppress their native and human rights.
Spoken in Urdu and Punjabi, with english subtitles, the film looks to contribute to debates within and outside Pakistan concerning the right of semi-nomadic ethnic and tribal peoples as citizens, in ways that allow ethnocultural autonomy. Exposing the relationship between endemic racism, corruption, and oppression of the Pakhiwas, the idea is to contribute evidence and support to demands for radical shifts in Pakistani political policy that would facilitate empowerment, freedom, and betterment of circumstances for these peoples.
Filming the jhumpiri coming down Safia and Michal Safia and Michal Collaborative drawing