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Dam/Age

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Women's History Month 2026 • 49m

Directed by Aradhana Seth • Documentary • 2002 • 50 minutes

"I suddenly realized… I command the space to raise a dissenting voice, and if I don't do it, it's as political an act as doing it… to stay quiet is as political an act as speaking out."- Arundhati Roy, Author of Booker Prize Winner The God of Small Things

DAM/AGE traces writer Arundhati Roy's bold and controversial campaign against the Narmada dam project in India, which will displace up to a million people. The author of The God of Small Things, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1998, Roy has also published The Cost of Living, a book of two essays critical of India's massive dam and irrigation projects, as well as India's successful detonation of a nuclear bomb. In her most recent book Power Politics, Roy challenges the idea that only experts can speak out on such urgent matters as nuclear war, the privatization of India's power supply by Enron and issues like the Narmada dam project.

As the film traces the events that led up to her imprisonment, Roy meditates on her own personal negotiation with her fame, the responsibility it places on her as a writer, a political thinker and a citizen.

"An urgent and vital film… Aradhana Seth's inspiring documentary charts Roy's progress, and her poetry, with bold accomplishment."—The Guardian

 

Tags
arundhati roy, asia, bioregions and habitat, booker prize, business, campaign, communication and media studies, dam, dam/age, development, doc, documentary, documentary films, earth science, economics, engineering, environment, environmental justice, environmental science, environmentalists, expository, film, film and video studies, geography, god of small things, habitat destruction, human geography, human rights1, hydroelectric, hydrology, icarus films, imf, india, international monetary fund, labor and economics, multinational corporations, narmada, ovid, ovid_ca, physical science, power politics, river, rivers and lakes, s_0071, s_0074, s_0085, s_0149, s_0421, s_0442, s_0488, s_0489, s_0514, s_0548, s_0646, s_0687, science and technology, south asia, the algebra of infinite justice, the cost of living, title_d, title_defgh, video, war talk, world bank, world regions

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