‘Kathak: Dancing With Taboos’ Film Festival Review: A Story of Passion and Perseverance
Eloquent and informative, Hajera Sheikh’s documentary Kathak: Dancing With Taboos tells a story of love for one’s culture and perseverance through adversity.

A family travels to a lonely country house to forget a death. A nephew is in love with his aunt. A mother does not forget a daughter. A mother pretends that nothing happened. Ten-year-old twins believe the forest is haunted. One brother has a stick in his hand, the other brother waits for him at the lake. A muddy mother walks down a deserted road. An aunt is bathed in blood; it is not hers. A family wants to be united again, it wants to survive. A family may realize that they were totally wrong.
Eloquent and informative, Hajera Sheikh’s documentary Kathak: Dancing With Taboos tells a story of love for one’s culture and perseverance through adversity.
The Lighthouse is patient and hypnotic, pulling us in with its mysterious atmosphere and characters. The film’s slow pace proves to be monumentally effective, showcasing the tedious nature that comes with isolation and poor two-way communication.
What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.
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A musical adventure that young viewers will enjoy as Blue and Josh travel to New York City for a big opportunity.