Wednesday Night: Tamil Refugees and Rice Pudding

wednesday night: On Wednesday night, Hot Docs unveiled Brothers In The Kitchen, a live documentary about the long, perilous journey of Tamil refugees from Sri Lankan civil war zones to the back of your favourite souvlaki spots, according to NOW Magazine. The performance at the Centre for Social Innovation had two women standing in a kitchen preparing payasam, a Tamil dessert similar to rice pudding, for a limited audience of about 150. He isn't alone in that observation. At the intimate and interactive gathering, speakers shared traumatic memories, with support from video installations, a live band and dancers whose fluid Bharatanatyam movements channelled the show's poetry, and on occasion, horror.A few technical glitches during the experimental production were welcomed as part of the collaborative process, and the audience was sometimes called on to read archival newspaper clippings aloud. Author Amarnath Amarasingam remembered the strangers who'd aggressively knock on his door in Toronto, collecting money for the Tamil Tigers from Tamil families weighed down by guilt over what they'd left behind. The CBC's Manjula Selvarajah hid at a bar until it was her turn to grab the mic and tearily offer a heartbreaking childhood memory of rioters trying to break into her house during Black July, the anti-Tamil pogrom that killed thousands and displaced many more. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.