THE past 12 years has seen the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF) become a leading celebration of south Asian cinema globally.
Europe’s largest Indian and south Asian festival now spans across multiple cities in the UK. Cary Rajinder Sawhney MBE has continually powered the fabulous annual film feast forward, as the co-founder and programming director.
“The warmth and support we have received from filmmakers in south Asia, and audiences has been inspiring. Our partners and supporters have also stayed with us to help us grow, including much loved patron Tony Matharu and his Blue Orchid Hotels,” explained Sawhney.
A reputation for delivering high quality programming has drawn audiences, but also major names from cinema, new talent, and premieres of acclaimed movies.
Sawhney reflects fondly on the many special moments on his LIFF journey and chooses a few: “Getting Farhan Akhtar out of a fan packed BFI was unforgettable, as was the late great Irrfan Khan talking about filmmaking and Gillian Anderson arriving in her little black dress to waiting paparazzi. There have been many great world premieres like Delhi Belly and Article 15 playing to packed out audiences.”
LIFF returns across multiple cities from June 23 to July 5. Like every year, a lot of hard work has been put in to select great films, for what is one of the festival’s strongest line-ups yet, which includes an exciting opening night gala.
“Our opening night world premiere is Dobaaraa, which stars Taapsee Pannu and is a sort of supernatural Sliding Doors style story between two times. Director Anurag Kashyap is a regular at our festival, which I know he loves, so it's great to welcome him back.”
Taapsee Pannu in Dobaaraa
Other major highlights from this year’s festival in London, Birmingham and Manchester includes a broad cross section of films like British Asian comedy Little English the Australia set No Land’s Man starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Pakistani-American comedy Americanish, Assamese language drama Emuthi Puthi (The Very Fishy Trip) and Malayalam movie Paka: The River Of Blood.
There is also Bangladeshi film No Ground Beneath The Feet, which Sawhney describes as a tour de force about a desperate ambulance driver on a white knuckle ride to save his job in the town and his family trapped in coastal floods. He is also excited about the 2022 festival’s in-conversation events with high-profile names attending.
“Our VIP guests include India's greatest woman director Aparna Sen on July 2 at BFI Southbank, talking about her amazing career, so far, which spans from working as a child star with the legendary director Satyajit Ray, to making some of West Bengal's most important arthouse films. Her daughter actor Konkona Sen Sharma is also giving an in-conversation on stage at Cinema Lumiere on July 1 and Nandita Das is attending to give a rare talk at Cinema Lumiere on June 30.”
The festival also has the annual Satyajit Ray short film competition and interesting documentaries like closing night movie Superfan: The Nav Bhatia Story, which charts the inspiring story of a Sikh immigrant in Canada, who became the first basketball fan to get an NBA championship ring.
“Superfan: The Nav Bhatia Story is the story of a poor immigrant who built a successful career while supporting and encouraging, what was then a flagging team, and helping them to become winners. He also galvanised Toronto's Asian and black communities to be their fans, which inspired many. It’s a real feel-good movie.”
A cross-section of classic films like Gandhi, Anita & Me, Four Lions, Bomgay and Mississippi Masala will be screened at this year’s festival. There is also a celebration of music with double bill documentary screening of Asian Vibes and a live music event.
“We have a live performance of British bhangra giants of the 1980s at Rich Mix called The Story of British Bhangra; if we don't remember our history and contribution to the UK who else will.”
LIFF has a diversity of south Asian language cinema, which Sawhney says is a direct connection to ‘home’ cultures for many people.
“The festival is a great opportunity to see stars and directors that you only ever read about in the flesh, and we are pleased to say that this year we have a large number of live events and filmmakers coming over to London, Birmingham and Manchester to introduce their films.”
Sawhney says he is inspired by cinema and seeing audiences enjoying the screenings, which is reward for months of hard work. He also likes giving young people an opportunity to see classics on the big screen.
“Watching films at some of the world's best cinemas, like BFI and Barbican, with amazing sound, like they were intended knocks the socks off TV viewing, as an experience.”
The Blue Orchid Hotels London Indian Film Festival runs across London, Birmingham and Manchester from June 23 to July 5.
Visit www.londonindianfilmfestival.co.uk
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A seated Jain enlightened teacherAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Ganesha from JavaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A Chinese silk painting depicting the BuddhaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
ArdhanarishvaraAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Head of a grimacing yakshaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
NagaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
The Bimaran casketAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5