In Short

Penn (Rediff India)

**70 million people. 6 weeks. 3 rivers.

The Kumbh Mela has drawn to a close this year.

Prashant Panjiar, photographer and author of India: The Definitive Images, offers Time magazine readers this photo essay in honor of the 45-day festival in Allahabad.

**Kal Penn will star in ABC’s new comedy, The Call, about a group of Los Angeles paramedics. The Namesake star will play a “hypochondriac and pessimist” on the show, which will also feature actress Kali Rocha (of Grey’s Anatomy fame).

**Amitabh Bachchan continues to make headlines this week, as he heads to Kolkata for the filming of Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh’s first English-language feature The Last Lear. The film will also star Preity Zinta and Arjun Rampal.

**New Yorkers may want to visit the Union Square Barnes and Noble this Monday night at 7PM, where Jhumpa Lahiri and Mira Nair will be talking about The Namesake.

Viewers Not Silent About Nishabd

Photo courtesy of http://www.nishabdthefilm.com/

The film has left many upset. Some are even asking for its lead actor to retire.

Amitabh Bachchan stars in the controversial new movie Nishabd. Earlier this week, protesters lined the streets of his hometown (Allahabad), asking for the film to be banned.

Nishabd, being called the Indian Lolita, is a remake of a classic Bengali film of the same name.

The plot revolves around an aging photographer and his infatuation with a young girl. Its subject matter has left some Indian film-goers feeling uncomfortable. “We’re still very orthodox and conservative about something like this,” says critic Taran Adarsh.

Bachchan insists he is pleased with the movie. “I like my performance, which is quite rare.”

More:
Unauthorized Bachchan biography out in the UK today
Bachchan’s daughter makes her small screen debut
Nishabd film stills

Got Kites?

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Aaron Huey/ ATLASPRESS

The services of Noor Agha, a fourth-generation kite-maker, have been commissioned by the producers of The Kite Runner, the soon-to-be-made film based on the eponymous best selling book by California-based MD Khaled Hosseini.

These days Agha spends his time in his “factory” (his living room) where he has been putting his two wives and 11 children to work. One wife, he describes as the second best kite maker in Kabul–but quickly adds that he has 45 years’ experience and “she’ll never be able to catch up.”

“In a country where most success stories are haunted by failure…about the only thing going right these days is the kitemaking industry,” Time Magazine tells us. Go here to read their full feature on Agha and The Kite Runner.

Nair A Breath of Fresh Air

Photo Credit: FoxSearchLight

NPR’s Terry Gross interviews filmmaker Mira Nair in this Fresh Air feature.

Nair speaks candidly about her latest project (The Namesake), and her first impression of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel (“I read The Namesake purely by chance on a plane…I was just absolutely captured by the distillation of Jhumpa’s writing of, especially, the death of a parent. I felt like I had found solace, I had found a person in the world who understood exactly what I was feeling…I wanted to make the film as personal to the Lahiri family as Monsoon Wedding was to my family”).

Listen to the full 20-minute interview here.

More:
On The Namesake (Nirali)
Salaam Shantaram!

The Little Black Dress That Could, Does.

Dominique in Kolkata. Bikas Das (AP)

When the ultimate little black dress was put up for auction last year, estimates suggested it would bring in about $150,000.

The dress, famously worn by Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, was designed by Hubert de Givenchy, and most recently modeled by Natalie Portman (“I was so nervous that I wasn’t going to fit. Everyone kept telling me how small it was”).

The frock brought in an astounding $800,000, and proceeds were donated to the City of Joy Foundation–a charitable organization working to better conditions in West Bengal.

Last week, thousands gathered around the City of Joy author and philanthropist Dominique Lapierre as he inaugurated a new school in Kolkata–a school that was built with with the auction-proceeds.

“I hope to build 15 schools with the money for destitute children of West Bengal,” he said. “I am very happy that my efforts are fructifying. Things are changing with more and more children going to school.”

Before her death in 1993, Hepburn visited South Asia (Bangladesh) as an ambassador for UNICEF.

More:
Audrey Hepburn’s Children’s Fund
Tribute to Hepburn’s humanitarian work
City of Joy the book

Birthday Celebration Will Be Off The Chain

Still from Anup Kurian film Manasarovar

The state of Kerala turns 50 this year.

In honor of the milestone, the Asia Society Washington Center, Sangeet Natak Academy and Indian government are throwing a wild party (And by that we mean they’re sponsoring a film festival).

Celebrating Kerala Cinema begins this weekend in Washington DC, and will run through March 18.

All films are in Malayalam–with English subtitles—and will be screened in the Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium. Tickets are free, but show up an hour ahead of time to secure yours (limit two per person).

For a complete list of films shown at the Smithsonian, go here.

More:
50 Years of Malayalam Cinema (Pdf)
Kathakali: Kalamandalam Ramankutty Nair at the London Film Festival
Manasarovar the movie

Because “Regular” Dating Isn’t Funny Enough

It’s a comedy about blind dating. Literally.

Due out this summer, Blind Dating stars Jane Seymour (wife of the film’s director), and Eddie Kay Thomas (American Pie, American Wedding). It also introduces Anjali Jay, who plays the object of a blind man’s affections. You might not be familiar with Jay’s work (unless you’re a fan of the BBC-series Robin Hood), but prepare to be won over:

The actress and Laban Center-trained dancer, was born in India and raised in London. Her performance as Jamila in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Midnight’s Children received solid reviews.

Blind Dating–which also features Sendhil Ramamurthy –will be in theaters May 11th.

Water Misses Boat

On last night’s Red Carpet (Yahoo.Com)

She calls her critically-acclaimed movie “one of those little films that’s blessed.” The New York Times says it’s “Serene on the surface yet roiling underneath,” effectively paralleling “the plight of widows under Hindu fundamentalism to that of India under British colonialism.”

Deepa Mehta’s Water is a passionate, thoughtful commentary on the societal and institutionalized oppression of widowed women in 1930s India. It might not have walked away with the Oscar for Best Foreign Film last night, but for Mehta that almost seems besides the point.

When filming began seven years ago, production was brought to an almost immediate halt after rioting extremists in India protested the director and her crew. Water was eventually shot five years later in Sri Lanka.

“I just feel that maybe if a film has gone through this type of journey, the payoff has been so generous,” she now says.

Mehta’s film will soon be seen in India, as Ravi Chopra has recently purchased the right to distribute Water there.

More:
Mehta wears mom’s sari to the Oscars
Deepa Mehta tries her hand at radio drama
Water receives Oscar-nod

Impersonation & Identity In India

UCLA’s Center for India and South Asia sponsors tomorrow’s lecture-cum-visual presentation by Purnima Mankekar, an associate professor in Asian American Studies and Women’s Studies. Extracted from a larger project on the role of transnational mass media in the production of South Asian public cultures, “Unsettling India: Impersonation, Mobility, Identity” juxtaposes impersonation in different contexts—by employees of call centers in Gurgaon, India, and by Bunty and Babli, the leads in a Bollywood blockbuster—to explore how it might provide a lens to understand contemporary Indian identity and cultural production.

Manekar is the author of Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India, an ethnography of TV viewing focused on the responses of upwardly mobile, middle-class urban women to state-sponsored entertainment serials (including Ramayan, Mahabharat and Hum Log).

More: Purnima Mankekar

Desi/Arab Film Festivus Maximus

Vimukthi Jayasundara’s The Forsaken Land

The 2007 New York Arab and South Asian Film Festival begins this weekend.

The “NYASAFF” will include award-winning documentaries, shorts, and full feature films.

Organizers say the festival–which runs from February 23rd through March 4th–makes sense, given “the historical and cultural affinities between these geographic regions, as well as the contemporary political landscape.”

More:
Full Festival Schedule