Have You Seen The Arana?'
'If an arana bites, death is immediate, goes the proverb. In the old Kerala, in the time of (OVVijayan's) 'Khasakkinte Ithihasam', the arana thus filled the images of dinosaurs in children's minds. Where is that arana today? With the question Have You Seen the Arana', Sunanda Bhat, a woman director from Karnataka, had participated in the Last Goa International Film Festival. This documentary unveils the horrendous face of the Malaya's changing life through the changes that our Wayanad has seen in the agriculture, landscape and weather in the last 25 years. The new generation has neither seen the arana, nor has it heard of it
'Have You Seen The Arana?' leads one to shocking realization that a society that has destroyed natural farming through the excessive use of chemical fertilizers, is actually killing its own biological body. ft's not a Malayali who has produced, funded and directed this film by toiling through five years of battling various odds. During this period, not even a single Malayalam film has been able to portray the scalding truths that Sunanda Bhat from Karnataka has made. So, wKlt are we talking about? It is here that Arana' becomes the representative of an unseen truth It's not only the arana that goes missing. Our cinema has not realized that a hundred living beings have perished It does not represent women, who constitute half of our society. It does not even understand what a Dalit's life means.