Sanjay Kak is an independent documentary film-maker whose recent film Words on Water (2003) on the anti-dam movement in the Narmada Valley in Central India has been widely screened in India and abroad, including at film festivals in Durban, Hong Kong, Locarno and Turin. In 2003 the film won Best Long Film prize at the Internacional Festival of Environmental Film & Video, Brazil, and prizes at Envirofilm, Slovakia; Vatavaran Environmental Film Festival, New Delhi; and International Video Festival, Trivandrum.
His film In the forest hangs a bridge (1999) received the “Golden Lotus” for Best Documentary Film at the 1999 National Film Awards in India. The film also won the “Asian Gaze” Award at the Pusan Short Film Festival, Korea. His recent work includes One Weapon (1997), a video about democracy in the 50th year of Indian independence, and Harvest of Rain (1995), made in association with the Centre for Science & Environment, New Delhi.
His films on the theme of migration, looking at people of Indian origin in the fringes of the city of London This Land, My Land, Eng-Land! (1993) and in post-apartheid South Africa A House and a Home (1993) have been widely screened. He has also produced and directed Cambodia: Angkor Remembered (1990), a reflection on the monument and its place in Khmer society.
Born in Pune in 1958, Sanjay Kak attended St Stephen’s College, Delhi and the Delhi School of Economics where he studied Economics and Sociology. His father was in the Indian Army, and his grandfather was related to Ram Chandra Kak, sometime prime minister of Dogra J&K.
Sanjay Kak lives in New Delhi where he has been active in the Campaign Against Censorship in India, and works closely with the Delhi Film Archive.
He has just finished making a feature length documentary film on Kashmir called Jashn-e-Azadi (How we celebrate freedom). The film has been under production for more than three years.