White Van Stories

Lakshmi is a professional singer and dancer at funerals. Krishnaveni makes her living by burying and cremating unclaimed dead bodies from the rivers and streets. Sethuraku never went to school and instead took to the sea at an early age.

This film is a tale about a young girl who grew up in the slave caste group and how she came to be immortalized as their locality, Maadathy.

This short film follows the journey of two friends Smile and Glady - looking for a rental apartment in Chennai and the obstacles and social stigma they encounter in not just looking for a home but being single and the fact that they are transgender women.

Dhanushkodi, the Indo-Sri Lankan border town, is the crucible wherein History is brewing this concoction of defeated lives and exhausted dreams. Manimekalai, the filmmaker, Soori, a half-wit Sri Lankan Tamil Refugee, Munusamy, the fisherman, Rosemary, the social worker in Jesuit Christian Refugee Services, try hard to retain their sanity in this mad jumble. Their interactions with the dead or living refugees, their skirmishes with the Indian and Sri Lankan States, their personal lives overrun by external events - form the kernel of this narration.

The Sunshine is about a young refugee (Armstrong) who flees from the war-torn northern Sri Lanka and embarks on a perilous journey through India, Nepal, Thailand towards an uncertain destination, leaving his childhood sweetheart on the shores that foam blood. The film looks back at the perils faced by Armstrong, a Sri Lankan Tamil, along with his epic odyssey from conflict and violence-ridden homeland, towards far corners of the world risking death, detention and deportation over the lands and seas. The Sunshine will explore the ultimate universal question how and why people get prepared to risk everything. The movie will tell the story of human struggle and not just merely make a political statement. Director Leena Manimekalai says, The Sunshine is unique and personal because it has the autobiographical touch of her friend and writer Shobasakthi.

The ten anthologies and eight long poems of the Sangam age are the oldest and most distinguished body of secular poetry extant in India, of which women poets were a very strong presence.

A documentary film by Leena Manimekalai.