Tanvir Mokammel’s feature film, Jibondhuli (The Drummer), and his documentary film, Bastra Baalika (The Garment Girls of Bangladesh), will be screened at an event in Tokyo, Japan, in January 2020.  The event is organised by the Sacred Heart Institute for Sustainable Futures, in association with Bangladesh Journalists/Writers Forum, Japan Bangladesh Society and Sheple Neer. The eminent filmmaker will go on a six-day trip to Japan from January 23.

On January 25, under the sponsorship of Asian Leadership Fellow Programme (ALFP), Tanvir will deliver a lecture, titled ‘Documentary Filmmaking in Asia: Hopes and Challenges’, organised by the International House of Japan. His documentary film on the female garment workers of Bangladesh will be screened after the lecture.

Bastra Baalika

This is not the director’s first visit to Japan. Several years ago, Tanvir made Japani Bodhu, a documentary film on Horiprobha Basu Mallick of Dhaka, the first female writer from the Indian subcontinent to write a book in Bangla on Japan, in 2015.

Tanvir came to Japan to shoot some sequences of Japani Bodhu, because Horiprobha had migrated to Japan after marrying a Japanese businessman in Dhaka. She worked for a radio station in Tokyo to broadcast the news of the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose-led Azad Hindu Fauz, from 1942 to 1944, during the Second World War.