Libia Lobo Sardesai is worthy of an international biopic, or a web series at the very least. It isn’t every day that you hear of a young woman who quit a secure job and co-founded an underground radio station to support Goa’s struggle to gain liberation from Portugal. Even rarer is the woman who gathered other achievements like some might pick flowers – a pioneering female lawyer, the founder of the Women’s Cooperative Bank in Goa as well as the Goa College of Home Science.
A recent documentary on Lobo Sardesai, who is now 102, gives some measure of her feats. Libby de Liberdade by Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar is built around the creation of a mural to mark Lobo Sardesai’s birth centenary in 2024. Painted by Solomon Lobo, the grandson of the prominent artist Francis Newton Souza, the mural is situated right across from where Lobo Sardesai lives in Panaji.
The filmmakers also interview Lobo Sardesai at length, and include footage of various celebratory achievements around her. The 79-minute documentary will be screened on October 30 at Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre by the Vikalp collective.
Libby de Liberdade (Libby of the Liberation) is a broad-brush portrait, rather than a rigorous exploration of an eventful life. The film’s focus –...