Tibetan doc "behind the clouds" soars at LA Indian Fest
By Alex Deleon-Sinha
The eighth annual edition of the Indian film Festival of Los Angeles opened a six day run here in the heart of Hollywood on Tuesday April 20 with a Gala screening of Dilip Mehta's "Cooking With Stella" and will terminate on Sunday with the Indo-Australian production "The Waiting City". The festival is set to screen 35 films from five different countries (INDIA, TIBET, NEPAL, CANADA and AUSTRALIA) including 4 world premiers and 7 US premiers. The venue for screenings is the massive state-of-the-art Arclight cinema complex at the corner of Sunset and Vine, in the very heart, literally, of historic Hollywood, where the sidewalks all around are covered with large five-pointed stars bearing the names of the illustrious screen, radio, and TV luminaries of yesteryear -- the so-called "sidewalks of the stars".
It's a busy slightly hidden foyer as you come in from Sunset Boulevard, with the entrance to the side of the giant golf ball dome of the Cinerama Theater out front. With 14 cinemas upstairs and a bookstore plus various other kinds of stands and eateries downstairs and crowds milling around the feeling is more like wandering into a general fairgrounds than a dedicated cineplex movie emporium. Two of the main theaters upstairs have been taken over for the Indian films, but if it weren't for the colorful presence of sari draped Indian women †he Indian films might get lost in the Hollywood first-run shuffle between venues. Follow the saris and you'll get to the right room.
The ethnographic breakdown of the turnout for the Indian films seems to be at least three quarters Indian (from all parts of India and all parts of the L.A. basin and beyond) with a liberal sprinkling of people of other colors and shades, including some pale-faced Anglo-caucasoids, but still not enough to indicate any massive crossover of Indian films to the american mainstream of viewership. Nevertheless, it is gratifying to see a solid clump of Indian films of all kinds, not just Bollywood glitter, turning up in the middle of the mainstream film community, not just in outlying urban fringes where Indian business enclaves have been established and the viewership would be, for all intents and purposes, 100% Indian. A noticeable presence is that of young born-in-America Indians, teenagers and early twenties, whose mother tongue is obviously straight American English, and whose knowledge of the Indian languages of their "Nisei" parents may range from sketchy to near zero -- however the films serve the purpose of a binding-glue to their Indian ancestry and roots. All well and good to be sure.
As for the films so far -- -- -- 'Cooking With Stella' (lightweight fair from a noble name), 'Harishchandrach Factory' (a beautiful fascinating historical meta-film about the Indian equivalent of DW Griffith --in Marathi!) -- 'Roadmovie' - A so'what'else'is'new ho-hummer that sneaks up on you before you realize it's grabbed you by the -- a real discovery!... 'Kaminey', an off-beat semi-noirish very violent Bollywood opus that has been making the festival rounds for no really good reason, and "Behind the Clouds" -- A truly remarkable, utterly timely, mesmerising, many-faceted jewel of a documentary centering on the Dalai Lama and the continuing Tibetan struggle for Independence from the no-nonsense expansionist Chinese...
Details on these films next time. Stay tuned.
Alex in Hollywood, Thursday April 23, 2010
