Suma Josson is an Indian-American journalist and filmmaker. Her documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 Niyamgiri, You are still alive, on the ecological and human damage done by bauxite

Bauxite

Bauxite is an aluminium ore and is the main source of aluminium. This form of rock consists mostly of the minerals gibbsite Al3, boehmite γ-AlO, and diaspore α-AlO, in a mixture with the two iron oxides goethite and hematite, the clay mineral kaolinite, and small amounts of anatase TiO2...

mining, won first prize in Short Film, Environment, at the 2010 International Film Festival of India

International Film Festival of India

The International Film Festival of India , founded in 1952, is one of the most significant film festivals in Asia. Held annually in the beach town of Goa, in the Western Coast of the country, the festival aims at providing a common platform for the cinemas of the world to project the excellence of...

.

Life

She was born in Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and graduated in English Literature from the University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

, USA. She began her career as a journalist at Press Trust of India

Press Trust of India

Press Trust of India is the largest news agency in India. It is headquartered in Delhi and is a nonprofit cooperative among more than 450 Indian newspapers and has a staff of about 2,000 writers spread across 150 offices nationwide...

, and in 1992 switched over to the visual media. She has made a number of documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

s. She has published three books: Poems and Plays, A Harvest of Light (a collection of plays), and Circumferences (a novel).

Her debut film was Janmadhinam which won three state awards, and was screened at various international film festivals including the 1999 Berlin Festival. She was one of the five women filmmakers commissioned to make a documentary Trading Images on the subject 'women's space' in a German international coproduction. Saree is her second feature film.

1998 – Janmadinam (The Birthday) - Malayalam

Sarasu has come to the hospital to deliver her baby. Amma, her mother, is with her, to assist her. The actual time-span of the film is a single night which the mother and the daughter spend at the hospital. Sarasu, a TV-reporter working in Bombay, keeps a diary into which she pours her inner-most feelings. We find out that Sarasu was forced by her father to marry Raghu, although she was in love with Ajay, a cameraman. A few months after her marriage, she passes through Bombay to join her husband. On the way, she meets Ajay in his flat. This is during the '1993 communal violence

Communal violence

Communal violence refers to a situation where violence is perpetrated across ethnic lines, and victims are chosen based upon ethnic group membership...

 in Bombay. In the aftermath of this meeting, Sarasu is finally forced to make a choice. And Amma realizes that she also has to take a stand, as a result of Sarasu's choice. It is this unspoken, unseen, subtle tension between mother and daughter, and a slow psychological unfolding of the personal histories of the main characters, which form the content of this film.

• Direction & Screenplay: Suma Josson
• Cast: Nandita Das, Surekha Sikhri
• Cinematography: Hari Nair
• Music: Narayana Mani

1999 – Saree - Malayalam

Two children, Gita and Radha, are stranded in the no man's land between two worlds that dominate contemporary childhood: school and home. This in-between land is one of myriad dreams, fears, and fantasies all yearning to take the shape of a free fluid space where children can summon whichever spirit they like. The two young friends are on their way back from the school as they recount their dreams in this subliminal space available only to childhood.

Saree was selected for the 1999 Berlin Festival, and in 2000 it was the inaugural film at the Mumbai International Film Festival in Mumbai.

• Direction & Screenplay: Suma Josson
• Cast: : Remya, Krishna, Nedumudi Venu, Sreelatha, Priyanka
• Cinematography: M J Radhakrishnan, K G Jayan
• Editing: Bina
• Music: Chandran Veyattumal

Gujarat: A Laboratory Of Hindu Rastra, Fascism

Set in the post-Godhra violence which was unleashed in Gujarat during February 2002, this film examines the extent to which the fascist ideologies of the communal forces have infiltrated into the sub-conscious of an ordinary Gujarati Hindu.

2003 / documentary / 50 min / English subtitles