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Actress Meera will speak at festival

15/ 9/2005

Bite the Mango Film Festival - 23-29 September

BITE the Mango film festival is back to celebrate its eleventh year with an eclectic mix of award-winning feature films, inspirational short films, masterclasses, seminars and star guests.

The annual festival brings the best in contemporary ethnic film to one of the UK's most ethnically diverse cities - Bradford.
From previews to premières, Bradford's National Museum of Photography, Film & Television celebrates non-Western perspectives in cinema during a festival which is sure to be a haven for every cultured film fanatic.

Throughout the week the festival is awash with UK premières of movies from far afield. Expect to see Bollywood directors sharing jokes with Icelandic actors, new screenings, seminars and lectures from top industry movers and shakers, retrospectives of distinguished actors and special screenings of rarely-seen films.

The Festival opens on Friday 23 September with the UK Premiere of 'Black Friday', a controversial film about the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. The film, which has been banned in India, received a Golden Leopard nomination at the Locarno International Film Festival and won the Special Jury Award for best feature at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles this year. Director of Black Friday, Anurag Kashyap will introduce the film and take part in a Q&A session.

Special guest at the festival is Pakistani actress Meera who will talk about her career and her debut in Bollywood. Ever since Meera made her on-screen debut with Samina Peerzada's Inteha (1998) the actress, who hails from Pakistan's film capital Lahore, has gone from strength to strength in her relatively short career. Meera started as a leading model in Pakistan, touring the country and often in Lahore, when filmmaker Peerzada bagged her for her first film. Inteha earned Meera her first award for Best Actress at the annual film award ceremony. A star was born!
Since her debut, Meera has appeared in over 60 films playing an eclectic mix of roles and last year became one the few Pakistani actresses to ever appear in an Indian film.
Bollywood recognised Meera's versatility as an actress and roped her in from across the border to appear in maverick film-maker Mahesh Bhatt's psychological love story Nazar
Though the controversial Nazar failed to make much of an impact at the box-office, Meera's talent and screen presence was definitely noticed and she has since signed up for a further four films in India.
The festival is the perfect opportunity to meet Meera in person and to hear her talk about her experiences as a Pakistani actress working in India's film industry. And… did the controversial kissing scene really happen in Nazar?

A whole section of films has been dedicated to Pakistan and include screenings of 'Javaid Shampoo,' 'Intezar,' 'Ghoonghat' and 'Crossing the Lines - Kashmir, Pakistan, India and Samovar'.
Quantitatively, Pakistan ranks amongst the top ten motion picture producing countries of the world with an average of eighty full length feature films per year. Almost all Pakistani films cater to the local market and no serious effort has been made to broaden the audience base or to enter movies at international festivals. As a result, very little is known or heard about Pakistan's cinema outside the country. The reasons for this have a lot to do with the history of the evolution of cinema in Pakistan.
With an abundance of unspoilt natural beauty and historical treasures in the country, Pakistani cinema can achieve world-wide recognition. The cultivation of a fresh crop of talented and committed young men and women should lead Pakistan's film world towards a bright future.

The Tasmin Little Music Centre in collaboration with Bite the Mango Film Festival and UBU will present University of Bradford's Bollywood Bonanza!
This will include an afternoon with Shabaz Hussain on tabla. Shabaz is a student of world famous Ustad Fayaz Khan and though still based Rochdale, he is increasingly in demand throughout Europe. A Bollywood Singing workshop will allow people to explore the history and development of Bollywood culminating in a demonstration of the main Bollywood classics with the help of singer Aishwarya Bhattacharya. Workshop open to all Bollywood fanatics, and no singing experience is necessary. This will follow the Bollywood in Style with Bol Punjab De event, a live disco with Sukha Soorma and group from Leeds - one of the UK's top Desi DJ's and live Dholl performers.

Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt will host the closing gala as he too talks about his career and about the Indian film industry.

Other films to watch out for during the festival include the following;

Bye Bye Miss Goodnight
Dir. Karan Kandhari, GB, India , 2005, 77mins, (no cert)
Cast: Neha Dubey, Zafar Karachiwala, Rajpal Yadav
About: Rajesh has had enough, and he's decided; he's going to drive his taxi into the night. The first place where day light breaks is where he's going to stop. He's not quite sure what he's doing, but with a little help Rocky and Niramala can make him smile.
A deadpan comedy, bringing to screen Bombay's night life and shot on a shoestring with an eclectic cast and a tiny international crew, Bye Bye Miss Goodnight is a refreshing alternative to the run-of-the-mill Bollywood diet.

Jihad!
Dir. Muhammed Rum, USA, 2004, 110mins,
Cast: Edgar Oliver, Waleed Zuaiter, Hussam Hamadeh, James Arnold
About: Jihad in Arabic, translates as striving, struggling, a zeal or effort and has two levels: a lesser Jihad and a greater Jihad. This movie focuses on the latter through the personal struggles of its main character Ed, a Palestinian-American living in a pre-911 New York City, and as reflected in the lives of his friends and family. Ed's cousin Salaam's unanticipated visit to New York City, which is precipitated by the death of a close friend in Ramallah (Palestine) brings up repressed conflicts for Ed as he pursues an affair with Hanna, a married American woman. Ed's romantic fixation on Hanna reflects the cultural relationship between the mid-east's attraction for the west and its struggle to come to terms with its limitations. Hanna holds the promise of a new romantic life yet one which is hopelessly wedded to it's own contradictions. Salaam at first is representative of many Arab stereotypes, but surprisingly reveals a more accurate portrayal of Palestinians in general. His visit triggers haunting memories for Ed of a past repressed life under occupation. Their discussions highlight differences in political, cultural, as well as ideological definitions about freedom, Islam and of course the meaning of Jihad.

Man Boat Water
Dir. Sanjay Nambiar, USA, India , 2004, 101mins, (adv PG)
Cast: S. Ajayan, Bhagyam Pilla, Amalraj, Julia D'Orazio
About: Shot on the enchanting waterways of Kerala, Man Boat Water is the story of the last journey of two veteran sailors, Bharathan and Damodharan as narrated by their sailboat. In an accident, the elder Damodharan falls from the boat and is injured. The first detour in the journey is made to take him home. But, as with life, several detours follow. Vasu, Damodharan's unemployed son, takes his place. The sailors encounter several intriguing characters - a fiendish terrorist, a maverick Christian priest, an American wild life photographer and a poor widow bearing home the corpse of her husband. Representing a microcosm of the universe, these characters overcome barriers of language and culture to forge bonds of friendship and understanding, a utopian harmony that the terrorist seeks to destroy.

One Dollar Curry
Dir. Vijay Singh, France, India, GB , 2004, 89mins, (12A)
Cast: Vikram Chatwal, Gabriella Wright, Smriti Mishra, Trevor A. Stephens
About: France-based Indian filmmaker, journalist and writer Vijay Singh's movie One Dollar Curry is a joint French-Indian production set in the French capital's well-established home of immigrants from the subcontinent - the 10th district on the north side, packed with grocery stores, restaurants, clothing stores and video rentals.
Nishan (Chatwal) takes political refuge in Paris. He comes to the French capital with nothing but his sense of humour and few bottles of oil called 'The Kamasutra Nandi Bull Oil'. While reflecting about his prospects of survival, Nishan is overwhelmed by the new world around him and the creative skills of his new friends - Fixer (Stephens) and Bale (Abenayake), who sell aphrodisiacs, give tantric massages and edit a local paper 'The Kamasutra Times.' He then meets a young television journalist, Nathalie (Wright) who is working on a documentary on immigration. That is when Nishan's fiancée Yamini (Mishra) arrives in Paris. A love triangle takes shape in which Nishan tries desperately to save his chef's job with his tireless imagination.
Vijay Singh will be available for a Q&A afterwards.

Paanch
Dir. Anurag Kashyap, India, 2003, 130mins, (adv 15)
Cast: Kay Kay, Tejaswini Kolhapure, Aditya Srivastava. Joy Fernandez
About: Paanch is the story of five members of a band called Parasites. How they live, fight and stay together in their ordeal of surviving failure. They want to make it in a world where opportunities are hard to come by and when they come they come at a price they can't pay.
In order to get the money they try to pull off a trick which rebounds on them and the story changes. Music goes out of their lives, all they want to do is get out of the mess they have created. It begins when a band member meets the music agent Amish Ranjan, a friend of the only loyal audience they have, Nikhil, who promises them the world if they can manage to raise the small amount of five lakhs to get a private recording done which can take them places.
To get the money Luke comes up with an idea - to stage a false kidnapping of Nikhil and ask his miser dad for money. But things go wrong when the dreaded police officer Deshpande come on to the scene.

Re-Inventing the Taliban?
Dir. Sharmeen Obaid and Ed Robbins , Pakistan and USA , 2004, 54mins,
About: Re-inventing the Taliban? brings a uniquely personal perspective to the disturbing rise of radical Islamic fundamentalism within Pakistan. It follows Sharmeen Obaid, a young Pakistani woman, as she travels into North West Pakistan. Her journey to find out what is going on has resulted in a portrait of people and places rarely seen in the Western media - people on both sides of a struggle now unfolding within Pakistan.

Sunset Bollywood
Dir. Komal Tolani, Hong Kong, 2005, 54mins,
About: A struggling actor in Bollywood dreams of his big screen break. It arrives, and he skyrockets to stardom. Becoming number one is easy after all - staying there is the hard part. Overnight success is sought by millions, but what happens when the lights go out? As the Bollywood machine churns out idol after idol, spare a thought for those bright-eyed heroes and heroines who fell off the production line after only one hit. Where are they now? And why did they disappear in the first place? In Bombay's glamorous celluloid word, failure is not an option. We follow three actors on their journey back, each one unable to accept failure, craving the narcotic high of celebrity.

Peace Tree, The
Dir. Mitra Sen, Canada, 2005, 47mins, (no cert)
About: Shazia, a 7-year-old Muslim girl and Kylie her Christian friend, dream of celebrating each other's festivals, Christmas and Eid. But when they share their dreams, they are met with resistance from their parents who express their concern. The Peace Tree shares the voices of the children who try to enlighten their parents to the importance of sharing and celebrating diversity together. Through their struggles, they create a unique symbol - The Peace Tree, a tree that highlights the symbols from all our cultures and faiths to reflect the beauty of 'diversity in unity'.

For more information visit www.mangofilmfestival.org.uk