By Ada Tseng
With six packed days of films, galas, seminars, and outdoor musical performances, The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles took over the Arclight Theater in Hollywood from April 21 to 26. Although many of the regularly-scheduled Hollywood films were still playing, Hindi music played both inside and outside the venue, outdoor festival information tables were placed under blue and magenta embroidered canopies, attractive women glided around in colorful, bejeweled saris, and the courtyard was crowded with excited festival-goers who couldn't quite believe they were in the presence of high-profile figures like Anil Kapoor, actor-director Nandita Das, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, or controversial social activist Kiran Bedi.
Only in its seventh year, IFFLA proved they could throw a party just as grand as anyone else. Riding the good vibes of Hollywood's love affair with Slumdog Millionaire, IFFLA took this opportunity to do a short retrospective of Anil Kapoor's three-decade career in Bollywood. The "Salute to Anil Kapoor" included audience favorites Virasat and Lamhe, as well as the world premiere of the English-language version of Gandhi, My Father, an award-winning film that Kapoor had previously released in Hindi in 2007. (Akshaye Khanna plays Harilal Gandhi, image below.) Turns out Kapoor the producer has always had his eye on the global world, and the unpredictable success of Kapoor the Hollywood actor, via Slumdog Millionaire, was just the push he needed to expand his career overseas. Next stop, working with Kiefer Sutherland in 24.
While Kapoor has been famous in India for years, Hollywood audiences mostly recognize him in two ways: as the charismatic but duplicitous game-show host in Slumdog, or as the beaming actor onstage behind Danny Boyle at every single awards ceremony -- the one cheering like a giddy schoolkid who just realized how cool it is to be on TV. The April 23rd Gandhi, My Father audience saw a different side to Kapoor, as he choked up during his post-screening Q&A, too moved by Gandhi's story to speak. After an awkward silence as Kapoor walked off the stage to collect himself, festival director Christina Marouda rallied the audience, who talked Kapoor through his tears and listened as he explained how the unknown story about Gandhi's relationship with his estranged son moved him to produce his very first feature film.
With their "Bollywood By Night" series, IFFLA took full advantage of the Arclight's 21-and-over screenings, which take place in a special theater, tucked in a corner, conveniently adjacent to a well-stocked bar. In addition to the Anil Kapoor films, IFFLA also hosted two popular screenings of Shashank Ghosh's Quick Gun Murugan, a colorful tale of a gunslinger from 1980s South India who is reincarnated into modern-day society. Audiences familiar with old-school Tamil pictures cheered at the screen and laughed at the on-the-spot parodies by actor Shashank Ghosh; audiences not so familiar with the inside jokes were at least amused by the campy posturing, and, more importantly, they were schooled about the true origins of Om Shanti Om's catchphrase, "Mind it!"
The film that won the Honorable Mention for Best Feature was Firaaq, Nandita Das' directorial debut which APA covered previously at last year's Pusan International Film Festival. Firaaq follows a number of loosely-connected stories which take place after the 2002 Gujarat riots that left hundreds of Hindus and Muslims dead. The characters range from an orphaned child trying to find his father, to a trapped housewife with a temperamental husband, to a young couple which just had their house burnt down. Based on "one thousand true stories" that Das has heard over the years, the film's characters are in hiding or hiding something -- whether it's their guilt, their fear, their pain, or, in many cases, their entire identities. A fake bindi here, a white lie about one's Muslim-sounding last name there; the young orphan boy quickly learns that sometimes silence and acquiesence is an easier way to stay safe during these uncertain times. Developed over three years, Das worked with her co-writer Shuchi Kothari to capture the human reaction to violence and the general vulnerability of people who suddenly feel like they no longer have control of their own lives. The final shot of the film reminds us of the last scraps of innocence that remain in a broken world, and it asks us to take responsibility for preserving it.
As an actress, Das is a frequent collaborator of director Deepa Mehta, who also had a film playing at the Indian Film Festival, Heaven and Earth. Denial and mysticism collide in a disturbing dive into the mind of a domestic violence victim, a young Indian wife who'd rather concoct a fable of fantasy rather than live imprisoned in her reality. The film's unsettling nature is accentuated by the fact that the woman being beaten (over and over again) is played by Bollywood's ray of light, the normally-exuberant Preity Zinta. Zinta has picked up numerous international acting awards for her role in Mehta's film. Heaven and Earth starts out feeling like an excessive sado-masochistic ritual between Mehta and the viewer, but after the story gets going, the intricate tug-of-war between logic and desire becomes more interesting when viewed through the lens of a modern woman's desperation, an insanity born from the misuse of tradition.
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