A Malayali family travelled over 5,000 kilometres all the way to China 700 years ago and settled there. The family’s 14th generation now lives in that country and some of the members still have the records of their forefathers and the connection between Kerala and China. These facts have been brought out in a 42-minute short film, ‘Guli’s Children,’ directed by Dr Joe Thomas, an IIT-Chennai assistant professor hailing from Kottayam. He conducted a research spanning over two years and nearly 20,000 km of field work across India and China to explore the links betweenKerala and China.
‘Guli’s Children’ (Guli in China is Calicut) will be first screened in Malabar Christian College here at 11 a.m. on April 20 and later in KTDC Raindrops conference hall in Chennai on April 22. “The film is on the history of the relations between Kerala and China, and Calicut was an important node in the maritime links between China and India,” says Dr Joe. “I got to see some of the members of the family, who still have the historical records of their forefathers and the connection between Kerala and China,” he says. “I have tried to bring out the cultural- historical ties from the time of the song, Yuan and Ming dynasties between Kerala and China and locates physical artefacts and also traces the human genealogy that survive to this day,” he adds.
