Film Screening and Discussion Gail and Bharat (2025) Film Screening Introduced by Dir. Somnath Waghmare

An American Fulbright scholar from Minneapolis, Gail, enters India in the ‘70s. Shocked by its caste system she decides to dedicate her life to the Dalits. She marries Bharat, a fervent anti-caste advocate. This film intimately explores Gail and Bharat’s shared journey during their impactful final years in Kasegav, a small village in Maharashtra.

Somnath Waghmare is a Mumbai based documentary filmmaker and researcher. He completed his M. Phil from TISS Mumbai, Masters in Media and Communication from Pune University and BA Sociology in Marathi medium from Shivaji University Kolhapur. He has previously worked as a contract employee at the Film & Television Institute of India Pune and was an apprentice with Amnesty International, India. To show his film work, he was invited as a guest by the Media and Communication Department, London School of Economics, Columbia University, Princeton University and University of Gottingen Germany. His recent documentary Chaityabhumi (2024) is released on MUBI. With minimal resources and social capital He made these films, I am not a Witch ( 2015), The Battle Bhima Koregaon : An Unending Journey (2017), Memories of Mangaon (2022) , There is no caste discrimination in IIT’s ? (2023) and short docu Mahaupasak- Yashwant Painter (2025) a film on the life Dalit artist Yashwant Painter, who has spent the last 50 years of his life creating Dalit Buddhist visual culture in the border district of Maharashtra-Karnataka through poetry, music, paintings, and sculptures. The film screened at the 36th São Paulo Biennale, Brazil. He is also co- founder of 'Ambedkar Age Digital Bookmobile'-Dalit song documentation project, and Founded Begampura Production to document Indian Dalite stories via films.