GET 35% OFF YOUR FIRST YEAR!

Limited time - use promo code: SPRING35 at checkout

Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

Dam/Age

Women's History Month 2025 • 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

Up Next in Women's History Month 2025

  • Apache 8
    57:46
    Apache 8

    Apache 8

    Directed by Sande Zeig • Documentary • 2012 • 57 minutes

    For 30 years, the all-female Apache 8 unit has protected their reservation from fire and also responded to wildfires around the nation. This group of firefighters, which recently became co-ed, soon earned the reputation of being fierce, lo...

  • Sacred Water
    55:32
    Sacred Water

    Sacred Water

    Directed by Olivier Jourdain • Documentary • 2017 • 60 minutes

    "If a lot of water flows, the town will be flooded. The water company can close down. We have all the water we need." —Fanny, guest on Flash-FM in Rwanda Vestine Dusabe is a radio host and sex educator with a mission: promoting sexua...

  • How to be a Good Wife
    1:49:35
    How to be a Good Wife

    How to be a Good Wife

    Directed by Martin Provost • Drama • With Juliette Binoche • 2020 • 110 minutes

    Maintaining a household and stoically submitting to conjugal duty are the skills Paulette Van Der Beck (Juliette Binoche) teaches with fervor in her homemakers institute. Her certainties are shaken when she finds her...

×