HOW WE CELEBRATE FREEDOM (JASHN-E-AZADI)

"There are so many graves here, sometimes it’s difficult to figure out which one is my son’s", says an old man matter-of-factly in the martyr’s graveyard. After 18 years of bloody armed conflict, with 60,000 civilians dead, thousands disappeared and 5,000 dead Indian soldiers, Sanjay Kak asks: what does Azadi ("Freedom") mean for Kashmir? We witness oppression, extreme poverty and religious propaganda. We watch the satirical farce of travelling performers. We visit an Indian Army camp and a psychiatric hospital where the traumatised population pour out their fears to the visiting doctor. We see smiling tourists who call Kashmir "a paradise on earth" and grieving families.
Sanjay Kak spent three years in the region, and took a close look. Using unofficial footage, including poems and poetically shot landscapes, he paints a sophisticated, critical and lyrical picture of Kashmir, which goes beyond the slogans and official news.

"This is just one story of Kashmir, it definitely is not 'the' story. 'The' story of Kashmir has not even begun to be told, not by the media, not by anyone else." Sanjay Kak

"Good documentaries don't necessarily change your mind; they do, however, prompt you to take your opinions out of mothballs and give them an airing. Jashn-e-Azadi is that sort of a film." Mukul Kesavan, The Telegraph, March 15, 2007

"These stories have been told before. Yet with Sanjay Kak’s film on Jammu and Kashmir, Jashn-e-Azadi, documenting an innocent population trapped between the terrorist's gun and the army's, one gets gooseflesh and a sting in the eye." Azera Rehman, India Abroad News Service, March 15, 2007