By APA Staff

Asia Pacific Arts reviews seven of the features from this year's Indian Film Festival, including best documentary winner "The Glow of White Women" and audience award winners "Loins of Punjab Presents" and "Super 30."

Loins of Punjab Presents
dir: Manish Acharya

Drector/actor Manish Acharya dives straight into comedic Idol satire in his first film, The Loins of Punjab Presents, in which "the largest supplier of pork loins on the East Coast" is sponsoring the "Desi Idol" singing contest. And what would a singing contest would be without auditions? The cast of actors -- Ajay Naidu, Ayesha Dharker, and Bollywood star Shabana Azmi -- portray a diverse group of extremes, from a gay bhangra rapper named "Turbanotorious B.D.G." to a pasty Caucasian boyfriend whose love for India is almost unnerving to a manipulative well-to-do contestant wanting to win for all the wrong reasons. We follow each family, couple, lover, and singer on the three-day war of vocal ability. It's the acting, not the music, which provides the film's emotional backbone. There is little to no background music, and only when it's time to perform do we hear a melody. In the end, The Loins of Punjab Presents charms the audience with wit and rehashes stereotypes without taking things too seriously. --LiAnn Ishizuka

The Sky Below
dir: Sarah Singh

One interviewee declares three citizenships: a spiritual citizenship of his time, a political one of Pakistan, and a greater one for the Indian Subcontinent. Another asks: "Where is home? Where one is born or where one dies?" The Sky Below also has a three-sided identity: one for the West, a second for the India Subcontinent, and a third for the abstract affinity to Time -- that abstract sense of belonging to a certain era and having a view of the past. The film dances around different "sides" but wisely claims none. Thus, by deliberately letting the people affected by the 1947 partition of India speak for themselves and their countries, the film does not predict the future nor give a verdict on the past. With interludes of quick shots and drum beats, it takes us on a culture-tour as Sanjna Kapoor's narrative voice, accented and soothing, feels like the watchful mother of the subcontinent, one who attests to the common root of her divided children, who saw and sees the suffering endured by millions. That is the tone throughout: one of observation, understanding, discovery, and loving neutrality. That Singh takes no position on whether or not the partition should have happened may be true; but her documentary does speak against how it happened and by whom the decisions were made. Her interviews affect, educate, criticize, and demonstrate multiple perspectives. All, however, are in English -- meaning we only see the partition through the eyes of the educated (not necessarily a problem) and that the film is intended for English-speaking audiences. It is hard for any documentary to envelop its audience in its events beyond mere glimpses of catastrophe--but perhaps Singh's experience in the visual arts is what enables us to be so engrossed and involved in this film whose subject can feel quite distant for some. --Ian Shaikh

The Glow of White Women
dir: Yunus Vally

Who is beautiful? And more specifically, which color defines beauty? Director Yunus Vally is both the subject and director of his documentary, The Glow of White Women, as he explores these questions in the context of South Africa under apartheid. He knows the answer: white women. White defines beauty. Remembering his own teenage angst over being suppressed from this very image of desire, Vally examines the sexual history of the colored, blacks, and whites and their differing experiences. Past Miss South Africa clips are weaved between Vally's own self-interviews. Magazine cut-outs of white images that Vally used to collect as a child feed the creative aesthetics of the documentary. Vally remembers the strictness of his Muslim upbringing and how he rebelled against a law of racial discrimination. The documentary is colored with Vally's own blunt humor an wit. At one point, he declares with a wide grin, "I fucked for the struggle." --LiAnn Ishizuka  

Bobby
dir: Raj Kapoor

The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles' "Bollywood By Night" series provides a twist for Bollywood film screenings, showing the movies late in the evening -- in this case, Raj Kapoor's 1975 film Bobby -- in a 21+ atmosphere. The series provides Indian American young adults a mode of watching classic Bollywood films combining the nostalgia of their youth (or their parents' youth) with the added bonus of optional (but encouraged) intoxication. The April 26th screening also attracted newbies, excited if not intimidated by the prospect of a 168 minute film, not realizing that there will be an intermission in the middle. And while the Naz 8 masala tea + samosa combo might not be available, they can settle for a variety of Arclight imbibements and signature chicken sausage baguettes.
 
Before the film, the audience was sheepishly warned about the old print, with its jumpy frames and 2-3 minutes of missing audio. But don't worry, it'll come back, the announcer assured us. But soon after the story started, any flaws in the film print became unnoticable. Where there wasn't as much rowdiness as expected -- perhaps Amitabh Bachchan in last year's The Wall inspired more cheering at the screen -- the Bobby audience was quietly entranced. Dramatic zoom-ins, first to Dimple Kapadia's innocent beauty and then to Rishi Kapoor's stunned reaction; a song-and-dance courtship; misunderstandings that test the couple's trust, leading to the inevitable disapproval of their parents.... These typical but enjoyable Bollywood cliches conclude with the ultimate dramatic waterfall scene, where the couple not only jumps off a cliff together out of love, but their parents follow suit, out of worry for their kids. It makes me wonder why more films don't include middle-aged men diving into waterfalls with their rebellious offspring. The comparable waterfall scene in the recent Indiana Jones film is probably the closest that Hollywood is going to get.  --Ada Tseng

 

Lost Moon
dir: Sudhir Mishra

Because Mishra's goal in Lost Moon is to recapture Bollywood in the 1950s, a proper disclaimer to the unversed would be that this is an era film -- one that loosely holds your hand through a crowd of faces, mumbling something (subtitled) in your ear about a talented couple you're about to meet., but mumbling too quickly, so you don't quite catch all the details. Nikhat (Soha Ali Khan) is an aspiring actress who rises under the wing of Prem Kumar (Rajat Kapoor), a Bollywood super star. Nikhat develops a misogynistic relationship with Kumar until the brooding and hunky Zafar (Shiney Ahuja), a writer, comes along and takes Nikhat away from Kumar to treat her right -- for a while. Relationships and careers go north and south and shift like the seasons, a testament to the real lives behind the Bollywood screen in the 50s. The film is a tribute to that age, but also a statement about it. It models a typical Bollywood film, with good heroes, evil villains, and damsels in distress, but quickly shivers off those roles and switches them around, commenting that these are real people with a real depth betrayed by their roles on-screen. It is a constant jump from Scene to Life to Scene, where the comedian stops being the silly buffoon, the evil man becomes compassionate, the sidekick gets the girl, and the hero hurts those he loves most. The art direction is a colorful hor'd'ouvre on the side that one can't help but marvel at, and the music -- fantastic, though not on par with the music in the era it replicates -- steals the audience briefly away into fantasy, away from the increasingly harsh reality of its characters. --Ian Shaikh
 
 

Super 30   
dir: Christopher Mitchell

The engineering underdog story Super 30 captured the interest of its small but attentive audience, ultimately taking home the Audience Award for Documentary at the 2008 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. Famed for its successful alumni of trained scientists and engineers, the Indian Institute of Technology is also known for its intense entrance examination, where only 5,000 out of 30,000 applicants are accepted. Super 30 focuses on Anand Kumar, who, with his teaching collegues, has set up a test-preparation program specifically for students from impoverished parts of the country -- the goal presumably to change the trajectory of these children's lives, giving them opportunities they would otherwise never be able to afford. The film follows the students' pressures as well as the teachers' determination to attain a 100% acceptance rate -- 30 out of 30. With Super 30's made-for-TV style comes a didactic British-accented voiceover and the tendency to quickly wrap up major storylines, so in the end, we're left with confusion over loose ends and more questions than we had before. However, throughout its duration, Super 30 is an engaging film about dedicated people that touches upon issues of class, family, pride, and the ever-evolving idea of success. --Ada Tseng

Taare Zamin Par
dir: Aamir Khan

Bollywood's reputation as being overly histrionic and filled with vivid song and dance-sequences is slowly revamped in Aamir Khan's Taare Zameen Par. Translated into English as Stars on Earth, the film stars Khan and introduces young actor Darsheel Safary. Khan's directorial debut, while a bit overly emotional at times, focuses on young Ishaan (Safary) and the problems that arise from his undiagnosed dyslexia. Aimed to be a social commentary on dyslexia and the problems young children with the learning disability face including a social stigmatization and a lack of family support, the film walks viewers through Ishaan's experience as being labeled a "problem child" to his development into a talented child artist, trained by art teacher Khan (whose character overcame dyslexia ). The film successfully conveys the pain a dyslexic child experiences from the social stigma, yet does it a few too many times. The first half of the film bombards viewers with scenes of Ishaan being mocked, ditching classes, upsetting his parents. The second half of the film, after Khan's introduction in the film, moves more fluidly and becomes humorous at parts. At one point, Khan talks to the art class about dyslexia and the famous people who have been diagnosed with it. From Albert Einstein to Thomas Edison, Khan talks about how dyslexia isn't synonymous with retardation and even mentions Bollywood's own Abhishek Bachchan. As one of the first mainstream Bollywood films that tackle social issues [see also Black] it alerts the Indian public on how to understand stigma and difference. The film's message might have been more powerfully conveyed with more emotionally constrained acting.  --Siddarth Puri

For APA's coverage of Best Feature award winner Amal, click here.

For APA's interview with the filmmaker of Loins of Punjab Presents, click here.  For APA's interview with the filmmaker of The Sky Below, click here.

Published: Friday, May 30, 2008