Film Synopsis

In a buzzing green room, amidst dancers in vibrant Indian costumes, Joti Singh, a Punjabi American choreographer, gazes at her reflection in the mirror, wearing a black blazer, glasses, and a pagdi—a traditional Sikh turban typically worn by men. She channels her great-grandfather, Bhagwan Singh Gyanee, a revolutionary poet and radical organizer. 

Tonight’s work-in-progress dance-theater performance is Joti’s decade-long effort to spotlight her great-grandfather’s pivotal role in the San Francisco–based Ghadar Party — the first organized transnational Indian freedom movement led by immigrant workers.

Growing up in Georgia, Joti, one of the few Indian kids, felt distanced from her roots until she discovered her great-grandfather’s revolutionary past. She felt an instant kinship with his anti-establishment ideals. His story shaped her as an artist and activist. Dance became her resistance

When her uncle, the family’s keeper of Gyanee’s writings and memories, passed away, Joti became the sole custodian of this revolutionary legacy.

Her research uncovered a story beyond the heroic: marked by surveillance, infiltration, and repression, leading to Gyanee’s arrest and imprisonment on charges of sedition.

Through movement, poetry, and embodied memory, this film captures Joti’s journey to reclaim this legacy — restoring Gyanee's and the Ghadarites’ rightful place in history and disrupting the erasure that threatens South Asian identity in the diaspora.