Film, TV, Radio

A Girl From Zanzibar

Feature film in development

Option agreements for the novel and Roger King’s screenplay adaptation have been signed with Sea Wall Entertainment. Joanna Lipper (Little Fugitive; Growing Up Fast; Inside Out) is attached as Director and Davien Littlefield (Capote) is Producing.

Still The Children Are Here

2004,  Mirabai Films, 85 mins.
Executive Producer: Roger King
Producer: Mira Nair
Director: Dinaz Stafford
Distributor: First Run Icarus Films

Still The Children Are Here, is a prizewinning feature documentary set in the remote village of Sadholpara in Northeastern India. The Garo indigenous people, once headhunters, repelled invaders throughout history, maintaining its own religion rooted in growing rice in skillful, ancient ways. Their hills are beautiful, as are the people, who welcomed the filmmakers into the intimacies of their lives. In numerous ways outside influences are daily unbalancing the intricate weave of the society: the food crops are failing, Christianity is gaining converts from the tribal religion, commerce is displacing self-sufficiency, and outsiders are drawn to the trees and coal belonging to the community. Some tribal members have taken up arms. But these interferences are not events of only local importance because the Garo have been the keepers for six thousand years of a living museum of numerous rare varieties of rice, upon which the future of the world’s most important food may depend. The irony is that the outside world is assailing a society upon whose continuity it depends..

Still The Children Are Here has been shown at film festival throughout the world, and had its US theatrical release at the Film Forum in New York. The distributer is First Run Icarus Films

The film was supported by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development ( IFAD), and especially its Assistant President for Indigenous Peoples, Phrang Roy. Mira Nair (Vanity Fair, Monsoon Wedding, Salaam Bombay etc) agreed to produce and to co-direct with her long term collaborator Dinaz Stafford (Kisses on a Train). Dinaz Stafford had the main creative responsibility for the project and lived in the Garo village, which we had come to know on earlier visits to the region. She is mainly responsible for the films engaging intimacy and gorgeous appearance.

Roger King was Originator, Executive Producer and technical advisor for this film.
Financing for the film came mainly from the Finnish and Japanese governments.