India Takes Centre Stage

India takes US centre stage
- Forget power brigade, Mughal-e-Azam rules Washington
K.P. NAYAR

Washington, April 10: India is stealing the spotlight in thousands of homes
in America’s national capital area: not because K. Natwar Singh, P.
Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Montek Singh Ahluwalia are promoting the
country across the US this fortnight as the next global power — or in spite
of them. The Washington glitterati’s current peak interest in India is on
account of Aishwarya Rai, Ashvin Kumar and Mughal-e-Azam.
On Wednesday, Filmfest DC, the 19th annual Washington DC International Film
Festival will open with director Rituparno Ghosh’s Raincoat, an Aishwarya
Rai-Ajay Devgan starrer set in Calcutta. The opening gala will be followed
during the next 11 days by 10 Indian films.
In addition, a Bengali film, Songs of Mahulbani, has been entered for the
festival’s “Capital Focus Award”, a first-time, juried competition of
selected films “deserving increased recognition”. This Bengali film, set in
the Santhal tribal village of Mahulbani, has already created considerable
interest here in the run-up to the festival.
In these days when political correctness rules America, the film is
controversial because of its focus on a young non-Santhal doctor who helps
the villagers in the fight for their rights, and in the process, gets
involved with a local married woman. The film’s director, Sekhar Das, and
heroine Rupa Ganguly will be here in person during the festival to discuss
their work. Songs of Mahulbani will be shown here along with Ashvin Kumar’s
15-minute film, Little Terrorist, which was nominated for an Oscar this year
in the short film category. The festival’s organisers are using the occasion
to premiere to viewers here one of Bollywood’s biggest extravaganzas ever,
the 45-year-old Mughal-e-Azam. What Americans will get to see is the
restored, colour version of the 178-minute epic, which was released in some
American theatres in New York and Los Angeles a few days ago. In a celluloid
mirror image of the handshake between Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Wen
Jiabao in New Delhi, the theme of this year’s Filmfest DC will be “From
Beijing to Bollywood”. The organisers have rationalised this choice on
America’s current efforts to develop all-round relations with India and
China. Festival director Tony Gittens believes that because of the
initiative, “hopefully, areas of culture previously unknown will be
illuminated in new ways”. Gautam Bambawale, the counsellor for culture at
the Indian embassy here, says Gittens and assistant festival director Shirin
Ghareeb, firmed up their decision to make India — along with China — the
central focus of this year’s festival after they attended the 35th
International Film Festival of India in Goa last December. He said a
Gujarati folk dance troupe sponsored by the Indian Council for Cultural
Relations (ICCR) will perform on the festival’s opening night. On their
return from Goa, Gittens and Ghareeb asked Manjula Kumar, a director of the
Smithsonian office of education and museum studies, to programme the choice
of 10 Indian films for the festival. “We have selected works of celebrated
contemporary filmmakers like Mani Ratnam, Rituparno Ghosh, and Govind
Nihalani and included the pioneering work of young, yet-to-be-discovered
talent like Ligy Pullapally and Ashvin Kumar,” she explained in a festival
document. Among these will be Nihalani’s Dev, starring Amitabh Bachchan and
Om Puri and set in the backdrop of the recent events in Gujarat after the
Godhra train-burning incident as well as Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se featuring
Shahrukh Khan and Manisha Koirala.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050411/asp/frontpage/story_4600939.asp