DOCUMENTARY SCREENING: GULI’s CHILDREN & DISCUSSION ON CULTURAL DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

Synopsis: Guli’s Children tries to bring out the cultural- historical ties, the physical artefacts and – most importantly – traces of human genealogy that survive between Kerala (in India) and China. Calicut (also known as GULI in Chinese) was an important node in the overall links between China and Kerala. Written, Shot and Edited by Joe, the film successfully locates the descendants of a Malayalee family (i.e. from Kerala) that moved from Calicut to China over 700 years ago, and settled there. Joe is the first Indian to have located the family in China. The film is a work of non-fiction, and reveals new insights into the history of Kerala-China relations that survive to this day. It is a work of non-fiction, and is basically a visual representation of his current research. It is his debut film.

Biography of the filmmaker: Dr. Joe Thomas Karackattu is an Assistant Professor at the Humanities and Social Sciences Department, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. He was “Fox Fellow (2008-09)” at Yale University and, more recently, was selected by the India China Institute at the New School, New York as one of the ‘2015 Emerging Scholars’ from India. He was also recipient of the inaugural “Centenary Visiting Fellowship” (nominated award) at SOAS, University of London in 2013.