THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART PRESENTS NEW YORK PREMIERES OF NEW INDIAN CINEMA
Eleven-Film Exhibition of New Works Includes Features by Established and Emerging Filmmakers
INDIA NOW
April 22–30, 2007 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
NEW YORK, March 29, 2007—The Museum of Modern Art, in association with the Indo- American Arts Council (IAAC), presents the inaugural annual exhibition of nine new feature films and two short films from India, many of them New York theatrical premieres, spotlighting the wide range of fiction and documentary styles and genres evident in India today. India Now, which is presented April 22–30, 2007, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters, includes films from India’s diverse regions. Several filmmakers will introduce their work, including Rahul Dholakia, the director of the opening night feature Parzania (2005), a moving account of the Gujarat riots of 2002. India Now is organized by Joshua Siegel, Assistant Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, and Uma Da Cunha, guest curator. Other filmmakers introducing their work include Arindam Mitra, whose Shoonya (2002) follows a star cricket player into the corrupt world of professional sports gambling; and Anjan Dutt, whose Bengali social satire The Bong Connection (2006) closes the exhibition. Also presented are two Bollywood hits: Dibakar Banerjee’s Capraesque comedy Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006) and Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara (2006), a richly operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello. Haobam Paban Kumar, with his documentary A Cry in the Dark (2006), bears witness to acts of defiance and brutality in the state of Manipur following the reported rape and murder of a girl in police custody. Nagesh Kukunoor’s Dor (2006), filmed in the breathtaking mountain region of Himachal Pradesh and in the deserts of Rajasthan, and Chitra Palekar’s A Grave-Keeper’s Tale (2006), set in the vast plateaus of Central India, are eloquently told stories of women who resist the constraints imposed on them by traditional caste societies. Veteran Bengali filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta, whose Chased by Dreams was a highlight of the Premieres series at MoMA in 2004, returns with Kaalpurush (2005), an intense chamber piece about a young man haunted by memories of his father. India is one of the world's fastest growing nations, with a healthy film industry: over 1,000 features are produced each year, from Bollywood blockbusters to intimate Malayalam, Bengali, and Tamil “art films.” The exhibition is made possible by Marguerite and Kent Charugundla. Additional generous support is provided by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art. Thanks to Aroon Shivdasani, President and Executive Director, Indo-American Arts Council; and Pooja Kohli, Director, IAAC Film Festival.
About The Indo-American Arts Council The Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC) is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to promoting, showcasing and building an awareness of Indian artists in the performing, literary, visual, and folk arts. Its focus is to help artists and art organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists from India to exhibit, perform and produce their work here. The IAAC also supports all the artistic disciplines in classical, fusion, folk, and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India, working cooperatively with individuals and organizations around the United States to broaden collective audiences and to create a network for shared information, resources, and funding. India Now marks the beginning of an ongoing collaborative relationship between the IAAC and MoMA. Further information: www.iaac.us
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INDIA NOW
SCREENING SCHEDULE
Sunday, April 22
7:00 Parzania. 2005. India. Directed by Rahul Dholakia. Screenplay by David N. Donihue, Dholakia. With Naseerudin Shah, Sarika, Corin Nemec, Parzun Dastar. In 2002, a pogrom organized by radical Hindus against Muslims in the west Indian state of Gujarat resulted in the deaths of more than 1,100 people. Dholakia, a native of Gujarat now living in Los Angeles, was inspired to make a film about Parsi family friends whose thirteen-year-old son disappeared during the riots. Dholakia has made a powerfully humanist statement against fundamentalist extremism, but also a gripping drama, and this is largely due to the astonishingly nuanced performances of Sarika and Naseerudin Shah as the boy’s parents. (Shah, who got his start in the 1970s parallel cinema movement, has recently starred in Monsoon Wedding, Shoonya, and Omkara.) Courtesy Serene Picture Classics. In Hindi and English, English subtitles. 118 min. (Introduced by Dholakia)
Monday, April 23
6:00 Dor. 2006. India. Written and directed by Nagesh Kukunoor. With Ayesha Takia, Shreyas Talpade, Gul Panag. Zeenat, an independent, headstrong Muslim woman from the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, learns that her husband stands accused in Saudi Arabia of the death of another Indian man. She embarks on a dramatic journey across the deserts of Rajasthan to seek the forgiveness of the only one who can pardon him, the dead man’s widow Meera. But Zeenat soon discovers that Meera’s fate is no less precarious than her own: a simple girl living in a rigidly patriarchal Hindu community, Meera has been reduced to a servile dependence on her father-in-law and threatened with an arranged marriage to compensate for her shameful loss. In Hindi, English subtitles. 124 min.
8:30 Shoonya (Zero Zone). 2006. India. Written and directed by Arindam Mitra. With Kay Kay Menon, Seema Biswas, Naseerudin Shah. Mitra’s debut feature, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral, is a finely wrought tale of temptation, treason, and honor. A star cricketer—played with great subtlety by Menon—is seduced into fixing his team’s matches, only to find the law, and his guilty conscience, closing in on him when the scandal breaks out. In Hindi, English subtitles. 100 min. North American premiere. (Introduced by Mitra)
Wednesday, April 25
5:45 Kaalpurush (Memories in the Mist). 2005. India. Written and directed by Buddhadeb Dasgupta. With Rahul Bose, Sameera Reddy, Mithun Chakravarty. An intimate portrait of a father, his son, and the women in their lives, told with characteristic melancholy and sardonic humor by master Bengali filmmaker Dasgupta. Rahul Bose, described by Time Magazine as “the superstar of Indian arthouse cinema,” plays a mild-mannered office clerk coping with his faltering career, his ambitious wife’s sudden celebrity, and haunting memories of his father, who continues to exert a powerful influence many years after their painful estrangement. As in Dasgupta’s Tale of a Naughty Girl and Chased by Dreams, the past impinges on the present in mysterious, almost surreal ways. In Bengali, English subtitles. 120 min. New York premiere.
8:15 Khosla Ka Ghosla. 2006. India. Directed by Dibakar Banerjee. Screenplay by Jaideep Sahni. A runaway hit comedy featuring many of Bollywood’s most beloved stars, including Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Ranvir Shorey, and Parvin Dabas. A middle-class family man from Delhi (Kher) sinks his entire life savings into a suburban plot on which to build his dream house, only to be swindled by a greedy land shark (Irani). How the neurotic patriarch and his dysfunctional family—shrewish wife, shallow daughter, disdainful older son, good-for-nothing younger son—manage to turn the tables on the crotch-scratching extortionist and his goons, and still find time for a song-and-dance routine, is a shaggy (under)dog story worthy of Frank Capra. In Hindi, English subtitles. 135 min.
Thursday, April 26
8:00 Parzania. See Sunday, April 22, 7:00
Friday, April 27
6:00 A Cry in the Dark. 2006. India. Directed by Haobam Paban Kumar. A documentary about resistance in the face of overwhelming military force. In 2004, Thangiam Manorama, a thirty-two-year-old woman from a village in India’s eastern state of Manipur, was arrested and reportedly raped and killed in police custody. The circumstances of her death and its subsequent cover-up sparked widespread outrage and a popular uprising. Kumar, a native of Manipur, bears witness to acts of brutality and courage as unarmed protesters--many of them women leaders--are beaten, shot at, tear gassed, and humiliated by soldiers of the Assam Rifles regiment, who flout their acts of violence before international human rights activists, journalists, and cameramen. Winner of a FIPRESCI (international critics) prize at the Mumbai International Film Festival. In Manipuri and English, English subtitles. 56 min. New York premiere.
preceded by
Bare. 2006. India. Directed by Santana Issar. A poignant short in which the filmmaker uses home-movie footage and recorded telephone conversations to reach out to her alcoholic father. In English. 11 min. New York premiere.
8:00 Omkara. 2006. India. Directed by Vishal Bhardwaj. Screenplay by Bhardwaj, Robin Bhatt, Abishek Chaubey, based on William Shakespeare’s Othello. With Ajay Devgan, Saif Ali Khan, Viveik Oberoi. Transforming the badlands of Uttar Pradesh into a modern-day mob underworld, Bhardwaj’s freewheeling, feverish adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy is one of Indian cinema’s triumphs of 2006. Leading a stellar Bollywood cast, charismatic actor Kahn plays against type as the dastardly Iago-figure Langda Tyagi, a loyal henchman to half-caste bandit chief Omkara (Devan plays the brooding Othello character to the hilt). When the politically calculating Omkara favors an impetuous playboy over Langda to be his lieutenant, the villainous gangster plots a deliciously devious revenge on them both. In Hindi, English subtitles. Courtesy Eros Entertainment. 151 min.
Saturday, April 28
2:00 Dor. See Monday, April 23, 6:00
4:30 A Cry in the Dark. Bare. See Friday, April 27, 6:00
6:15 Maati Maay (A Grave-Keeper’s Tale). 2006. India. Written and directed by Chitra Palekar. With Nandita Das, Kshitij Gavande, Atul Kulkarni. Widely admired for her performances on screen and on the Marathi avant-garde stage, Palekar makes her directorial feature debut with this forceful adaptation of the short story “Baayen” (“Witch”) by the well-known author Mahasweta Devi. A young woman, torn between familial and lower-caste duties and her own maternal instincts, makes a fateful decision to abandon her sacred responsibility as the caretaker of a children’s graveyard. Fearful that the nursing mother has become an evil spirit, the superstitious villagers banish her to a life of poverty and isolation. Palekar’s intricate interweaving of past and present, Debu Deodhar’s stunning location photography in the stark landscape of northern Maharashtra, and the impassioned performances of Nandita Das (star of Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Water) as the wild-eyed outcast and thirteen-year-old non-professional Gavande as the boy who is strangely drawn to her, imbue this feminist ghost tale with grandly tragic overtones. In Marathi, English subtitles. 98 min. New York premiere.
preceded by
Printed Rainbow. 2006. India. Directed and animated by Gitanjali Rao. In Rao’s gorgeously animated short, winner of three prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, a lonely old woman dreams of traveling the magical worlds printed on her precious collection of matchboxes. 15 min. New York premiere.
8:30 Shoonya (Zero Zone). See Monday, April 23, 8:30
Sunday, April 29
1:15 Khosla Ka Ghosla. See Wednesday, April 25, 8:15
4:00 Kaalpurush (Memories in the Mist). See Wednesday, April 25, 5:45
6:15 Omkara. See Friday, April 27, 8:00.
Monday, April 30
5:30 Maati Maay (A Grave-Keeper’s Tale). Printed Rainbow. See Saturday, April 28, 6:15
8:00 The Bong Connection. 2006. India. Written and directed by Anjan Dutt. With Shayan Munshi, Raima Sen, Parambrata Chatterjee, Victor Banerjee. Dutt’s utterly endearing and smart satire follows the parallel stories of two young Indian men who have difficulty adjusting to life and love in a new country: one a charismatic Indian musician from New York who moves to Kolkata to discover his cultural roots, and the other a conservative but ambitious Bengali computer technician who seizes a job opportunity in Houston. An award-winning actor, singer-songwriter, and journalist, Dutt brings warmth, humor, and subtlety to his tales of the Indian diaspora, and offers a touching homage to Satyajit Ray in his expert use of traditional and fusion music (the clash of Old and New World cultures) and his casting of Soumitra Chatterjee, the original Apu, as a dying patriarch. In Bengali, English subtitles. 110 min. New York premiere. (Introduced by Dutt and actors)