MediaStorm, one of the best-known multimedia studios in America, in collaboration with the Alexia Foundation, launched a multimedia project called "Undesired" October 1. The 12-minute piece uses photography, video and audio to show the horrors of gendercide in India, including the burning of women who produce daughters instead of sons.
Agentinian photojournalist Walter Astrada won the Alexia Foundation's Professional Grant to capture images of women and children in India victimized by gendercide. Astrada and the Alexia Foundation then collaborated with MediaStorm to add video and audio content.
Fellow SAJA-member and recent Columbia Journalism School graduate, Shreeya Sinha, is the associate producer for the piece. Sinha, who is interning at MediaStorm, spent two months of the summer in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Vrindavan, Dehradun and Bihar conducting interviews of various widows, mothers, activists and academics. Later, she traveled to the India-Nepal border to find more sources. "I was shooting mostly in the north where the sex ratios are lowest, and snaked my way to the border of Nepal and India, where young girls are being trafficked to be bought and sold as brides," writes Sinha in an e-mail. Altogether, she shot about 25 different interviews and wrote MediaStorm's first text piece.
Astrada's images along with powerful interviews from activists such as Ruchira Gupta create a disturbing but powerful project that MediaStorm says is just a part of a bigger mission. Sinha says that she along with MediaStorm hope the piece will "be part of a worldwide movement to raise awareness about the issues women face in India."
Shreeya Sinha answers questions at a Q&A session that followed the screening of "Undesired" at the Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn on Sept. 30, 2010.
