This weekend is the San Diego International Kids Film Festival. One of the short films showing will be “Failure Groupies,” which explores the themes of racism and terrorism through the eyes of 12 year olds. I was very excited for the chance to speak with the film’s director, Mandira Chauhan. Mandira grew up in Mumbai… Continue reading An Interview with Mandira Chauhan
The Hundred Foot Journey captures the rise of Indian influence in the world’s culture. When an Indian family opens a restaurant across the street from her Michelin-starred restaurant in a village in France, Madam Mallory (Helen Mirren) disdainfully dismisses the food of these invaders– it’s much too spicy, she says.
Sholay opens to a train arriving at a station leading to a scene of two men riding on horseback across a rocky landscape that could easily be the old American Southwest. Interspersed with the horseback riding are shots of of a village that could also be from that time and place, but for an architectural… Continue reading Sholay: A Bollywood Classic
“The River” is a weird film. It’s weird for a lot of reasons. It was made in 1951, when experimental films were less familiar. It was made outside of the studio system because the film’s director, Jean Renoir, had fallen out of fashion and couldn’t make the film the way he wanted. For example, he… Continue reading The River (1951) Film Review
Fire was the first Indian movie Puja ever showed me. It was her way of introducing me to some of India’s cultural issues that mean so much to her.
Kahaani is a pretty solid mystery thriller. It starts with a chemical terrorist attack that kills all the passengers on a particular train car. Then we cut forward two years and a pregnant woman is searching for her husband who has gone missing in Kolkata (Calcutta).
“Is she vamp or victim?” the gossip columnists Nayla asks, “which should I label her?” The Dirty Picture is based on the true story of South Indian softcore actress, Silk Smitha, who attained great popularity in the 1980s. She succeeds in the film industry by being neither fully in control nor fully controlled by the… Continue reading The Dirty Picture
Whenever I learn about Indian history, I am always surprised by the long history of interconnectedness between India and the West. Well before America was a country, India was influencing Europe and Asia in ways that would eventually make it here. This tradition continued in the life of Rabindranath Tagore. He was born in Calcutta… Continue reading Rabindranath Tagore (1961), A Documentary on a Great Literary Figure
Who is junglee (uncultured, wild)? Is it the mannered, wealthy people who live lives according to the rules of society, who suppress all joy and happiness in exchange for great riches. Or those of less wealth, who are less restricted by society, who are capable of experiencing joy, happiness and love? Junglee means ill-mannered or… Continue reading Junglee – Hindi Movie Classic
Well Done Abba is a delightful farcical comedy about corruption in India. Armaan Ali (Boman Irani) is a chauffeur in Mumbai who returns to his village near Hyderabad to get his daughter married. He planned to go back for a month, but ends up staying for three months. When he get to his village, he… Continue reading Movie Review: Well Done Abba!
In the 1960s, many Westerners flocked to India on a spiritual journey. Most left after weeks or months. Hippie Masala is about the ones who stayed. The sixties were such a defining period in American history, sometimes it’s easy to forget that it was a movement that happened worldwide. The hippie counterculture really peaked, as… Continue reading Movie: Hippie Masala
About as long as I’ve known Puja, she’s shared with me stories of the Mahabharata and tried to explain Hinduism to me. Years ago, when we drove from California to Virginia, she passed much of the time telling me stories from the Mahabharata. These stories are deeply ingrained in her from her childhood. She always… Continue reading Movie Review Monday: Arjun: The Warrior Prince
