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NYIFF is Here! Travel to India through Cinema
[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ow can it be summer without the New York Indian Film Festival? Through ups and downs, its cinematic wisdom has seen us through good times and bad, and showed us the better sides of our nature. The good news is that NYIFF – one of the pure delights of NY- is back and the slight downer is that it is still online and not the in-person events we remember, with movies on the big screen, surrounded by movie buffs. Next year we hope to embrace the old days when fans hobnobbed with stars and filmmakers and ate real samosas and drank real wine at real venues!
Yet one has to take this with a pinch of optimism as many of us are still leery of getting rid of our masks and moving into the old world where there was no six feet distancing and friends were greeted with a hug. So in this way we can enjoy the pleasures of wonderful new cinema in the comfort and security of our living rooms.
The NYIFF runs from June 4 through June 13 and all the films can be seen on MovieSaints. All access passes can be obtained at nyiff.MovieSaints.com. There’s a whopping 58 films – features, docs and shorts – in 15 languages.
[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o let’s concentrate on the sheer delights of a smorgasbord of new films from exciting new and noted filmmakers. Aseem Chhabra, the director of NYIFF, has curated a wonderful slate of films, which includes the bookends of the opening night film ‘Where is Pinky?’ and the closing night film ‘Fire in the Mountains’.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he centerpiece film – ‘Ahimsa Gandhi’ – is a powerful documentary and its cast is listed as ‘Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Dalai Lama, Rev James Lawson’ – now who wouldn’t want to watch a film with such celebrated names and which tracks the inspiration of Gandhi’s non-violence movement on leaders like Congressman John Lewis and Nelson Mandela? An interesting aside – the Title song Ahimsa is by AR Rahman, Bono and U2.
There’s a treat for Satyajit Ray fans –
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[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ight now when real travel is still not a possibility due to the pandemic, NYIFF is the perfect option, offering India armchair travel, taking you to remote villages and little-known towns, into the lives of little-known people. You discover real truths and come away with a better understanding of not only the larger world but also of yourself.
As always, these films are in various Indian languages and take you out of your personal zone into a realization of the fundamental universality of all human experience. You get to hear the sounds of Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi and many more tongues besides English and Hindi and come away with renewed sense of India’s vastness and the beauty of different lives lived.
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]esides features, you have shorts and documentaries, giving you a comprehensive view of India, moonlight, warts and all. These films tell you everything about the Indian sub-continent, its strengths and its foibles.
Some of the films have such delightful names that you want to see them just to see if they are as evocative as their names imply: Who can resist the sound of ‘House of the Orange Trees’ (Orange Marangalude Veedu)? This film is about the bond between a grandson and grandfather and a fast disappearing world. The idyllic orange trees are soon to be decimated to make way for a hydroelectric project which is taking over the valley in the name of modernization. The film catches memories of a hometown that is vanishing.
‘Ghar ka pata’ – Home address – is another poignant film which will appeal to all those who have ever left their home. Director Madhulika Jalali tells the very personal story of her family’s loss of the Kashmir Valley, a home that lives on in their memory in this changing world.
[dropcap]‘G[/dropcap]od on the Balcony’ is a powerful Assamese film by Biswajeet Bora which should make for a sobering watch. Can one even imagine the state of mind and the grief of a man who has to cart the dead body of his beloved wife back home from the hospital on his bicycle? His child and he trek back with their precious cargo through the wilderness to do the last rites even as their tragedy gets politicized. In hidden corners of India you come face to face with the callousness of life and the heartbreak of ordinary people.
[dropcap]N[/dropcap]YIFF is not only about the harsher side of life but also celebrates humor, romance, joy and the sheer humanity of people. There can be no talk of the Indian experience without talking about weddings – so you have ‘First Night’ which shares the vastly different first night stories of seven different couples. The films at the festival are nuggets of Indian life, rewarding you with their insights and their candor.
Audiences are not traveling much due to the pandemic but this is one journey worth taking – a trip to India via the films at NYIFF.
For a full list of movies visit – https://www.nyiff.us/films/
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NYIFF 2019 – Celebrating INDIA in All Its Diversity
