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About this talk

Of Times There Were Before is a portrait of Romila Thapar, one of the world's most influential historians and public intellectuals. At ninety-four, having lived through much of the making of modern India, Thapar stands at an unusual distance from the past she has spent a lifetime studying. Filmed at her home in New Delhi, the documentary begins with a simple question: who is the person behind the historian's name? Moving beyond the authority of Thapar's scholarship and the public image built around it, the film explores her life, memories, ideas and intellectual journey. What emerges is an intimate portrait of a life still in conversation with its own time. The film is the first in Eshan Sharma's planned series of documentaries on Indian historians who have shaped the ways in which we understand the past. Run time: Approx. 85 minutes. Language: English with English subtitles. Directed and produced by: Eshan Sharma. Edited by: Anant Raina.

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