Shelter

The only film, made while still a student, by the promising cinematographer and director Uma Segal, who died in 1991. The film deals with slum demolition in Bombay, a major political issue in the early 80s (and also the subject of Patwardhan’s Hamara Shaher, 1985). It intercuts interviews with various concerned individuals, and ends with documentary shots of an actual demolition. Demolitions are nothing new. Over the years they have taken place again and again. Periodically municipal squads armed with crowbars smash through clusters of huts and cart away the debris of personal belongings in garbage vans. The films hopes to emphasize the injustice of a system which creates slums and then batters an already deprived population further by demolishing their homes. PUCL, lawyers collective and a citizen's vigilance committee debate the issue while people whose huts have been demolished relate their experiences.