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THE NEW INDIA AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART CELEBRATES CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CINEMA Special Appearances Include Human Rights Advocate Kiran Bedi, Academy Award- Winning Documentarian Megan Mylan, and Legendary Actor Naseeruddin Shah The New India June 5 – 18, 2009 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters NEW YORK, May 7, 2009—The richness and diversity of contemporary Indian cinema is explored in The New India, a two-week, 16-film exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, from June 5 through 18, 2009. The exhibition presents feature and short films, including eight New York premieres, that capture the range of fiction and documentary genres and styles in Indian cinema today. Among the celebrated guests who will present their films in person at MoMA are actors Naseeruddin Shah and Abhay Deol, actor-director Nandita Das, and the Academy Award-winning documentarian Megan Mylan. The exhibition is organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, and Uma da Cunha, guest curator. The New India opens on June 5 with the New York premiere of Megan Doneman’s Yes Madam, Sir (2008), a riveting portrait, narrated by Helen Mirren, of one of India’s most inspiring and controversial public figures, Kiran Bedi. Both Doneman and Bedi will introduce the opening- night screening. As India’s first elite policewoman and revolutionary reformer of one of India’s most notorious prisons, Bedi received the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award (Asia’s Nobel Prize equivalent) for her three-decade fight against corruption, bureaucracy, and human rights violations. India is one of the world's fastest growing nations, with a film industry to match. Over 1,000 features are produced each year, from Bollywood blockbusters to intimate Malayalam, Bengali, and Tamil "art films." A country whose population now numbers more than a billion— with 23 official languages (including Hindi, Urdu, and English), hundreds of regional dialects, dozens of political parties, and myriad religions—is united by a passion for cinema. Following the success of MoMA's India Now exhibition in 2007, The New India features three recent commercially and critically successful Bollywood hits. Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodhaa Akbar (2007), the latest blockbuster by the director of Langaan, is a sixteenth-century historical romance of Cecil B. DeMille proportions, featuring a cast of a thousand elephants. Dibakar Banerjee’s Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008) is a sharp satire of New Delhi culture, which will be introduced by its star, Abhay Deol, on June 8. And Zoya Akhtar’s Luck by Chance (2009) is both a dazzling homage to 1940s and 1950s backstage melodramas and a witty send-up of the Bollywood dream factory, featuring cameos by some of India’s most beloved movie stars. Exemplifying the so-called unconventional, or “parallel,” cinema is Neeraj Pandey’s sleeper hit A Wednesday, a disturbing cat-and-mouse thriller introduced by its legendary star, Naseeruddin Shah, on June 10. Further celebrating genre moviemaking with their New York premieres are Faiza Ahmad Khan’s infectiously charming documentary Supermen of Malegaon (2008), about the filming of a no-budget, Bollywood-inspired superhero movie in a textile village near Mumbai; and Shashank Ghosh’s Quick Gun Murugan (2008), a zany, outrageous “curry Western” by a promising new talent from the wildly popular Tamil cinema of southern India. Bengali cinema is represented by one of its most internationally respected filmmakers, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, whose recent film The Voyeurs (2008) is a slyly ironic and poignant study of urban anxiety, repressed desire, and voyeurism in the teeming city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). The New India also explores some of the devastating problems afflicting India today, from child exploitation and AIDS to sectarian riots and tribal uprooting. Politically charged fiction films include Chapour Haghighat’s The Firm Land (2008), about a village on the Indian Ocean that is threatened with a deadly disease (Haghighat will introduce the New York premiere on June 6); Nandita Das’s Firaaq (2008), an intense drama about the tragic aftermath of the 2002 sectarian riots in Gujarat (introduced on June 6 by director Das, who is also a celebrated actor and activist); and Father Joseph Pulinthanath’s Roots (2008), about the brutal upheaval of tribal peoples in northeast India, a landscape and culture virtually unknown even in India. The exhibition features a notably strong selection of recent nonfiction films, many of them centering on stories of children that are by turns inspiring and disturbing. Megan Mylan’s Academy Award-winning short subject Smile Pinki (introduced by the director on June 7) is the poignant story of a village girl who is cured of her cleft lip. Rajesh S. Jala’s Children of the Pyre (2008), winner of top prizes at the Montreal and São Paulo Film Festivals, is the harrowing portrait of seven “untouchable” boys who tend the largest open-air crematorium in Varanasi. And Sourav Sarangi’s Bilal (2008) follows an eight-year-old boy as he helps his blind parents navigate, and even survive, the slums of Mumbai. The exhibition The New India is made possible by Marguerite and Kent Charugundla, Tamarind Art Council. Press Contact: Meg Blackburn, (212) 708-9757, [email protected] For downloadable images, please visit www.moma.org/press. No. 43 Public Information: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019 Hours: Films are screened Wednesday-Monday. For screening schedules, please visit www.moma.org. Film Admission: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is 2 presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights, 4:00-8:00 p.m.). Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders. The public may call (212) 708-9400 for detailed Museum information. Visit us at www.moma.org Screening Schedule The New India Friday, June 5 8:00 Yes Madam, Sir. 2008. India/Australia. Directed by Megan Doneman. Kiran Bedi is one of the most inspiring and controversial public figures in India today. In 1972, despite fierce opposition, she became India’s first elite policewoman, and stunned the nation by facing down three thousand sword- wielding Punjabi rioters armed only with a wooden baton. Later, she became the governor of one of Asia’s most notorious jails, Tihar, and transformed it into a model for prison reform worldwide. Her three-decade battle against seemingly indomitable forces of corruption, bureaucracy, sexism, and prejudice, and her work on behalf of women, prisoners, and community charities, has been nothing less than visionary, earning her the Ramon Magsaysay Award (Asia’s equivalent to a Nobel Peace Prize) and a key position at the United Nations. In this fascinating documentary portrait, narrated by Helen Mirren, Doneman offers an honest, intimate look at Bedi’s astonishing life and career, while also examining the considerable personal costs of public duty and media celebrity. In Hindi; English subtitles. 95 min. New York premiere. Introduced by Kiran Bedi and Megan Doneman Saturday, June 6 2:00 Yes Madam, Sir. Introduced by Kiran Bedi and Megan Doneman. (See Friday, June 5, 8:00.) 5:00 The Firm Land. 2008. India/France. Written and directed by Chapour Haghighat. With Mansoor Seth, Ava Mukherjee, Honey Chaya. When a deadly disease (AIDS, though not named as such) threatens to wipe out an entire village on the Indian Ocean, six emissaries are sent to the big city to find “learned” men who can help bring immediate medical care. The villagers are quickly rebuffed by the corruption and indifference of government bureaucrats, but find comfort, and a means to resistance, in the companionship of other marginalized figures: a group of street kids, a disillusioned retired professor, and a formerly aristocratic old woman who hosts a grand and joyous feast for them. With a quiet moral outrage and a compassionate understanding of human cruelty and folly—reminiscent of the films of Abderrahamane Sissako—the Iranian-born filmmaker and playwright Haghighat gives his film what he calls “both a realistic and mythical approach, using a mixture of dream and reality.” 95 min. New York premiere. Introduced by Chapour Haghighat 8:00 Firaaq. 2008. India. Directed by Nandita Das. Screenplay by Das, Shuchi Kothari. With Naseeruddin Shah, Paresh Rawal, Deepti Naval. Making her deeply affecting, remarkably self-assured debut as a feature film director, the celebrated actress and activist Nandita Das (star of Deepa Mehta’s Earth and Fire) puts a human face on the sectarian riots that caused thousands of deaths, most of them Muslim, in Gujurat in 2002. With a veteran ensemble cast led by Shah, Rawal, and Naval, she intricately weaves together the very different stories of ordinary people—Hindus and Muslims alike—who nonetheless share a 3 shattering sense of loss and terror in the immediate aftermath of the carnage. Firaaq, whose title comes from an Urdu word meaning separation or quest, is a powerful cry against violence, intolerance, and injustice by a filmmaker more interested in provoking questions than reinforcing stereotypes. A highlight of the 2008 Telluride Film Festival (where it was presented by Salman Rushdie) and the Toronto Film Festival. In Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati; English subtitles. 101 min. Wagah. 2009. India/Germany/Pakistan. Directed by Supriyo Sen. Winner of a top prize at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival and made in commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this short documentary depicts an astonishing ritual that takes place nightly at the frontier outpost of Wagah—the only road link along the 2,500-kilometer border between India and Pakistan.