Cowboys in India

Aided by two locals, director Simon Chambers goes to the poorest area in India where a tribe is fighting to save a sacred mountain from multinational mining moguls who say its resources will bring prosperity to the people.

Film Signature Image
Series
Global Voices
Premiere Date
June 5, 2011
Length
90 minutes
Funding Initiative
International
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2011 Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival-Best Documentary Feature Award
    • Producer

    Teddy Leifer

    Director

    Simon Chambers

    Having gained a first class honors degree in sculpture from Bath Academy of Arts in 1983, Simon showed his work around Europe and the UK. But a burgeoning social conscience and eagerness to see how other people lived their lives led him to a five-year stint as a community worker on a travelers’ site, later moving on to become senior youth worker at a rural… Show more activities center for London teenagers. After numerous arrests for campaigning against South African Apartheid and other social issues, Simon worked with the McLibel Campaign and as an AIDS researcher for a prostitutes’ collective. While at the NFTS, he began to develop ways to make films about important issues in an entertaining way. His graduation film, The Company We Keep won the Royal Television Society’s Best Factual Film Award in the postgraduate category. Show less

    Producer

    Paul Taylor

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    The Film

    In a remote and impoverished region of India, a London filmmaker is unaware of the trouble he will cause his two endearing, bumbling local guides as they investigate the Corporate Social Responsibility program of a high-profile, London-based mining company. The company plans to mine a local tribe’s sacred mountain, and promises to bring all the benefits of modernity to the area. But many of the tribal people vow to fight, preferring a simple life in nature. As allegations accumulate, the filmmaker’s ethical stance is put to the test as he tries to get his film “in the can.”

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