“We have run out of new places to conquer, new places to mine, new places to dam. The remaining oil resources are there in places where it is untenable or difficult to get. They are now coming to those most remote places – the Ramu Nickel Mine, the TarSands of Alberta.” Winona LaDuke

A narrative of “docu-fiction,” ‘Centralia: Ghost Dance’ (which takes its cues from Basu’s critically praised book, ‘Centralia’) transforms the story of a decades-long indigenous guerrilla war in Central India into an ambiguous narrative that unsettles our understanding of truth, media, violence, feminism, and environmentalism within a global context.

The films captures the struggle between forest-dwelling indigenous populations in central India where the coveted mineral deposits of iron ore, bauxite, and coal are mined and exploited by outside forces, including the Indian government. The displaced tribal population has responded and rebelled since the 1960s by organizing as Maoist revolutionaries called Naxalites. In 2009 this simmering conflict esculated into a full blown insurgency, pushing the country to the brink of civil war.

The film draws us in with lyrical images of mysterious landscapes and figures. It is a work of science fiction that uses the very real global ecocide to speculate on the end of the world, the continued dispossession of indigenous groups and the further erosion of women’s rights. An eco-feminist narrative that imagines that the only survivors of this ecological holocaust are a group of women sent out into the cosmos, as a final act of survival.

At it’s heart, the film asks a very simple, urgent question: how did humanity get here?