October 4, 2007

By Michael Field

Fiji's first Hindi language movie has been banned from public screening in Fiji.

   Adhura Sapna, centred on a rural land dispute between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, has already screened in New Zealand. 

   But its director, Vimal Reddy, says the Fiji Censor Board has certified it as unsuitable for screening due to its strong racial themes.

   To win permission to screen it the board says some of the dialogue and the land issue needs to be deleted. 

   Reddy told the Fiji Times today that the movie was trying to promote unity and reconciliation. 

   "I'm confident the movie has got nothing to provoke any problems," he said. 

   "We were trying to show how we're trying to live together peacefully." 

   He did not want to remove the parts the board asked him to remove because they were the crux of the movie. 

   Around 40 percent of Fiji's 850,000 people are ethnic Indians, mostly descendants of contract labourers imported by Britain to work on Australian owned sugar plantations. Rural Indo-Fijians these days most live on leased land with many of the leases now expiring.

Copyright: Michael Field