[1]On a September day in 1989, Babu Ganguly sat down on a barren piece of land in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. A few minutes later, he sensed magic in the land that made him want to spend the rest of his life there. That turned into a big story — and the story has turned into an award-winning film, Miracle Water Village too! For Babu Ganguly, it was not easy, though.
Wherever he turned to, he heard sad stories of farmers who committed suicide after their farms failed to give the yield. Babu along with two other activists changed the story of Anantapur. They bought 32 acres of land and called it Timbaktu.
They formed the Timbaktu Collective to protect and regenerate 7,000 acres of revenue wasteland into forests. Today they work with 1,050 farmers who grow wholly organic food on 3,570 acres of land.
The story of Timbaktu was written about by two young filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, who run a company called Black Ticket Films in New Delhi. The duo has been making issue-based documentaries. In one of their researches during the making of a film Miracle Water Village, Timbaktu came up.
“The film looks at the relations of humans with food, with land and with nature,” says Rintu.
The film won the National Award for Best Environment Film including Agriculture this year.
Links:
[1] http://103.241.136.51/t1jpg-538