Solar Eclipse sneak peek at Dubai Film Festival
Solar Eclipse Teaser released at Dubai Film Festival on 8th December 2016
The Dubai film festival saw the release of the teaser of the epic film ‘Solar Eclipse – Depth of Darkness’, based on true events that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on 30th January, 1948.
The feature draws a parallel between the assassinations of President Abraham Lincoln and Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was a living legend, famous of his pioneering work in promoting non-violent resistance through awakening of the masses, subsequently taken up in the struggle of world freedom by leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Sir Richard Attenborough’s epic film Gandhi, released in 1982, was nominated for 11 Oscars, winning 8.
Solar Eclipse, shot in exotic locations in Sri Lanka, Dubai, London and India, is set in the period immediately after world war II, which led to the independence and partition of India on sectarian grounds, leading to the worst communal strife ever recorded in modern history.
Over 2 million people died in less than two months of communal murder, rapes, kidnapping and mass looting, across India and the newly formed Pakistan.
Starring well-known Hollywood, British and Bollywood stars such as Stephen Lang, Luke Pasqualino, Om Puri, Bobbie Phillips and British ‘Bad boy’ Vinnie Jones, the feature promises to be both engaging and entertaining.
Solar Eclipse movie, Mahatma Gandhi poster. Photo courtesy of PR News Wire
The teaser of the film www.facebook.com/solareclipsemovie has over 4 million views in less that three weeks across the globe, generating passions across the world of cinema goers and history lovers alike.
IMDB Movie Page : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4677244/
Solar Eclipse is a movie based on real events that shaped India as a secular, democratic country and paved the way for the world’s largest democracy, as it struggled and survived through it’s formative days immediately after independence from The British Empire. The movie draws an interesting parallel between India during the life & assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, and USA during the life & assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and how their eventual assassination, though a tragic event in itself, virtually turned around the two countries to be successful secular democracies, from the separatist and civil war path that both were trudging on.
The Story of Solar Eclipse
Solar Eclipse is a film that celebrates democracy, while at the same time boldly and blatantly stating that great things are sometimes born out of great tragedies. And the movie is a movement. A movement towards ‘The right to know’ and ‘The right to understand’, two fundamental rights that do not exist in the classified corridors of world politics. Solar Eclipse takes the approach that world events sometimes get shaped by violence, and at other times through deliberate planning and conspiracy, but are seldom works of ‘accidents’.
The story is a conspiracy theory, blended with fiction where facts are not available, but based on a solid fact that police was well aware of the plot to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, as stated by Judge Atmacharan, the special judge appointed for the ‘Mahatma Gandhi assassination case’. This fact was later verified and confirmed by the Kapur commission, that sat and announced it’s findings in 1967, a whopping 19 years after the tragedy.
Solar Eclipse is an action packed drama that focusses on the lives of the three police officers, who well aware that Mahatma Gandhi’s life is at risk, must act according to what they believe is their responsibility and/or is best for their country. Will saving the Mahatma save the country. Based on the movements and activities of the then Director of Intelligence Bureau (D.I.B.), the then Deputy Inspector General (D.I.G.), Central Investigation Department (C.I.D.) – Poona (Now Pune) and the then Deputy Commissioner of Police (D.C.P.) – Bombay, this is the writers take on why they did what they did, with the eye of the cinema.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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