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Aishwarya in Choker Bali
Award for gang rape shocker
29/ 3/2004
A LONDON based film festival showcasing the talent of Asian
women across the world could be coming to the north west.
Organisers of the Asian Women's Film Festival, Tongues on Fire,
want to bring the festival to the Greater Manchester area if they
could find an organisation that will be willing to work in
partnership with them.
The festival is in its sixth year and is held in London to mark
international women's week.
Festival co-ordinator Pushpinder Chowdhury said they do not have
the resources to bring the festival to the North.
She said: "We would be more than happy to work with an organisation
from the north west and bring the festival to an even wider
audience.
"We have wanted to extend our project but we are a small
organisation and need help to take the festival to other parts of
the UK.
"If anybody is interested they can email me and we can see what can
be done."
The festival is aimed at enhancing the cinematic experience not
only for Asians but the wider audience,
This year's festival showed a number of award winning films
including Choker Bali, Sandstorm and Khamoshi Pani.
Choker Bali is a Bengali film and stars one of Bollywood leading
actresses Aishwarya Rai.
The film is based on Rabindranath Tagore's book, Binodini which is
set in early 1900s Bengal and focuses on a young widows struggle
for independence.
Choker Bali was screened at the Lacarno Film Festival where a
die-hard fan was so moved by Aishwarya's performance that he or she
left a 100-page letter of appreciation for the actress at her
hotel.
Sandstorm stars Nandita Das and is the true story of a low caste
Indian woman Bhanwari Devi who is gang-raped by a group of upper
caste men in her village.
The story of her long drawn out struggle for justice is told in
narrative flashbacks as she fights to win justice in a corrupted
and sexist judicial system.
Khamoshi Pani won its leading actress Kiron Kher the best actress
award at the 58th Lacarno film festival.
Kiron (who is probably best remembered for her role as Paro's mum
in Devdas) plays a Sikh woman in Pakistan who at the age of 16 is
left behind in the country during independence. She refuses to jump
into a well and kill herself because of her religion and instead
marries one of her abductors and settles down until her brother
arrives in the country looking for her.
The festival in London, which started on 5 March, ends on 16 April.
For more information on all the films and screening dates log onto
www.tonguesonfire.com.
North west organisations that want to help bring the festival to
the north west can email Pushpinder on
tonguesonfire@aol.com
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