Dignity With Flowers
India Spotlight
•
5m 16s
HelpUsGreen is a unique social enterprise based in Kanpur, India. It collects four tonnes of waste flowers everyday from temples and turns it into sustainable products such as organic fertiliser and incense sticks. In doing so they prevent pesticide laden flowers from entering the river Ganges thereby stopping an important polluting element. The waste is hand sorted by marginalised Dalit women previously working mostly as sanitation workers who often faced social discrimination, exploitation and violence. The company provides them with bank accounts, health benefits and insurance, not to mention fair wages. Financial incentives aside, their lives have transformed through this employment. The women feel relieved to have left work that brought them indignity and insecurity. Dignity With Flowers is a film that reveals the story of one such woman Ranjana, who feels her life has turned around. If others do the same Ranjana says, there will be positive change everywhere.
Director: Gautam Pemmaraju
Producers: Our Better World
5 min | India
Languages: English, Hindi
Subtitles: English
FILMMAKER Q&A:
https://simaacademy.com/filmmaker-qa/dignity-with-flowers/
Up Next in India Spotlight
-
Cast in India
Iconic and ubiquitous, thousands of manhole covers dot the streets of New York City. Enlivening the everyday objects around us, this short film is a glimpse of the working lives of the men behind the manhole covers in New York City.
Director: Natasha Raheja
2014 | 26 min
USA | India -
Can't Hide Me
Women and girls are often put down, silently, subtly. Bound by invisible chains in their homes, on the streets, in schools and public spaces. Always maintaining a low profile, always crushing their dreams. Is it possible for them to fight back? And what happens when they find the courage to do so...
-
Across The Tracks
One year on from the launch of the Clean India campaign, with its ambitious target of a toilet for every household by 2019, WaterAid explores how something as simple as a toilet can help transform lives. Radha Verma, determined to protect her daughter after she narrowly escapes a physical attack,...
