“Nineteen Eighty-Four: and the Via Dolorosa Project” [sic] is a documentary that centers around a painting the Singh Twins did that was meant to memorialize the Sikh massacre of 1984. The Via Dolorosa Project was something they later became involved in, which had various artists interpret the stations of Christ.
The massacre of Sikhs wasn’t widely reported in this country, so anything one can learn about it is always a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, you won’t learn all that much here other than that it was a terrible tragedy. What is interesting is how the Singh sisters tied the event into the life of Christ. It’s a fit that works well, but one that I could see upsetting a lot of people. By their account, there wasn’t much controversy, but that could be because they didn’t look hard enough.
As a short documentary, this isn’t all that spectacular. It actually plays more like an application letter for an art gallery, but that’s okay. Twenty-two minutes is a good amount of time to hear artists explain their art and ideas, so it isn’t a total wash. Just don’t watch it expecting some new insights into a vastly underreported massacre (one of many, actually) that’s happened in the past thirty years.
