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Film Festival of India
The Voyeurs
Friday, May 9, 8 p.m.
Rich Theatre
Dilip and his friend Yasim are country boys trying to make good
in the crowded, competitive streets of Kolkata, where
computer-savvy Dilip operates a modest business installing
security cameras. The naive young men are neighbors with dancer
Rekha (Bollywood star Sameera Reddy), who aspires to a career in
the movies. When Dilip, smitten by her beauty but too shy to
express his interest, hides a camera in her apartment and begins
spying, the consequences are graver than he could have ever
imagined. Director Buddhadeb Dasgupta infuses his critique of
the culture of surveillance and fear with cutting humor and
flashes of magical realism. In his Variety review, Robert
Koehler praised the director’s “exceptional capacity for
irony-tinged tenderness toward his characters and ability to
expand small-scaled stories into accounts of what it means to
live in the modern world.” (India, 2007, 115 minutes.) In
Bengali with subtitles.
Before the Rains
Saturday, May 10, 8 p.m.
Rich Theatre
In the lush landscape of India’s southwestern Kerala state,
Henry Moore (Linus Roache), a married Englishman with a
colonialist’s sense of entitlement, plans to build a spice
plantation. The year is 1937, but here road-building is still
done with laborers and elephants, and Moore relies upon his
right-hand man, T. K. (Rahul Bose), to run the show while he
romances his lovely housekeeper, Sajani (Nandita Das). Their
taboo relationship is eclipsed by the arrival of his wife and
son from England. In the events that ensue, Moore finds that his
fortress of privilege and power can’t shield him from the
community’s outrage. In the Toronto Film Festival catalogue,
Cameron Bailey praised director Santosh Sivan’s (The Terrorist)
marrying of striking photography and period details with
film-noir plotting: “Rahul Bose . . . is the heart of the film:
here is the Indian man navigating all the harsh choices that
came with colonization.” (U.S., 2007, 98 minutes.) In English
and Malayalam with subtitles.
The Eclipse/Grahanam
Friday, May 16, 8 p.m.
Rich Theatre
Director Mohan Krishna Indraganti won the top award for a debut
film at the 52nd Indian National Film Awards for The Eclipse, an
unnerving study of mysticism, superstition, and misogyny based
on a controversial novel by the most famous Telugu writer, G. V.
Chalam. Set in a small town in southern India, it centers on the
relationship between Saradamba, the generous wife of a landowner
(played by Jayalalitha), and Kanakayya, a teenaged student whom
she’s taken under her wing. Saradamba dotes on the boy, feeding
him lunch and paying for his studies. When he falls ill with a
high fever and doesn’t seem to be improving despite medication,
his parents summon a healer, who claims that the sickness
results from sex with a middle-aged woman and that only blood
from her thigh will cure him. In his glowing review for
Rediff.com, B. Anuradha called The Eclipse “a gripping film . .
. with a bold theme. . . . The film’s narrative strength comes
as a whiff of fresh air.” (India, 2004, 96 minutes.) In Telugu
with subtitles.
Outsourced
Saturday, May 17, 8 p.m.
Rich Theatre
Thirty-something Seattleite Todd (Josh Hamilton) is stunned to
discover that his employer, Western Novelty, has decided to shut
down its call center and transfer operations to India.
Overnight, he’s outsourced to a village outside Mumbai, where in
a half-finished concrete bunker he’s expected to train the new
sales force. While Todd is reeling from culture shock, his staff
face their own challenges understanding the product line: a
ceramic American eagle isn’t a mystery, but what is a Wisconsin
cheese-head hat and who would use a branding iron for
hamburgers? Aided by smart, capable, and lovely co-worker Asha (Ayesha
Dharker, The Terrorist), Todd learns lessons not covered in
business school. Director Jeff Jeffcoat won top awards at the
Seattle, San Jose, and Palm Springs film festivals for this
genial comedy. (U.S., 2006, 98 minutes.) In English and Hindi
with subtitles.
Amal
Saturday, May 31, 8 p.m.
Rich Theatre
Set in the roiling streets of New Delhi, this fable-like movie
centers on Amal, a generous-hearted auto-rickshaw driver. Amal
has a roster of regular customers, but one day he picks up a
cranky, shabby, seemingly homeless man. His patience and
kindness to this curmudgeon lead to a series of events that
reveal the best and worst of human nature. Canadian filmmaker
Richie Mehta proves an excellent director of actors and vividly
captures the manic pulse of the great metropolis. In Toronto
Life magazine, reviewer David Balzer found the influences of O.
Henry and De Sica in Mehta’s debut, calling it “winsome,
entertaining viewing.” (Canada, 2007, 101 minutes.) In English
and Hindi with subtitles.
http://www.high.org/experience/films/default.aspx?id1=1367 |
