FIRE IN OUR HEARTS

Directed by Jayshree Janu Kharpade (India)

Educating Girls in Developing World

Jayshree Janu Kharpade of India was taken out of school at 7 years old so that she could raise her four younger brothers and contribute to her parents’ labor at a brick kiln site. Exceptionally bright and motivated, she pleaded for years with her parents to let her return to her studies. They finally agreed, and she soon rose to the top of her school. Now aged 16, she illuminates the immense social and economic potential of educating girls in the developing world.

Jayshree’s film mentor is the renowned Joyce Chopra, a pioneer of documentary cinema whose numerous titles include That Our Children Will Not Die, about primary health care in Nigeria, and the autobiographical Joyce at 34, which is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Joyce, and a second camerawoman, Cat Papadimitriou, went to India in January 2011.

Read about Joyces’s time in India with Jayshree in her Notes from the Field.