From September 6 through October 1, the Gene Siskel Film Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago will show movies from Bollywood. According to the website for the exhibit, Bollywood is rivaled by Tollywood, the commercial cinema of south India. Both are represented in our series. The movies being shown include, Dil Chata Hai, Mr and Mrs. Iyer, and Jang aur Aman.
Okay I don’t know where to place these websites but if you can a delicious dose of irony, then I can recommend two marvelously funny websites by two un-NRIs who share our sensibilities. Get some funky art at Pardon My Hindi, and get a shot of visual offensiveness at TurbanHead.
Neil Biswas, the writer of Second Generation, a television series for Channel 4 in Britain riffs on all things British Asian in this interview with The Guardian.
Two years ago I started writing a two-part serial called Second Generation for Channel Four. I set it in east London around the Bengali community where I grew up. Inevitably, it has flashes of autobiography, but perhaps more importantly, it has stories – stories that I have seen, stories that I have heard, stories that I know and stories that I have made up knowing they could happen
Biswas seems scarred from watching too much Mind Your Language. He lashes out against the norm and the stereotypes, racisim and politics of modern England. His points, perhaps are a pointer for all global South Asians.
In the same way that politicians can’t bludgeon people into being more “British” by making them speak English at
Continue reading...Continue reading Channel 4’s Second Generation goes live
Continue reading...Continue reading Rishi Rich, Britney Spears, Tirlok Gurtu and Robert Miles
‘Falling in Love’ is the sexy upbeat summer hit that’s been rocking the airwaves in Canada. And if you have not heard it in US or elsewhere, you will… soon. And that is when you will get to know Deesha. (Click here to listen to the song)
Much like in her video for ‘Falling In Love’ where Deesha and her girls are cruising, chilling and hanging out in their neighbourhood enjoying a T.dot summer. She’s a Toronto girl through and through. It’s a flirtatious, spontaneous fun ride. [ MyBindi.com ]
You can get a full low down on the girl here.
Talwar Gallery continues its tradition of bringing ground breaking artwork by un-NRI folks from all around the planet to Planet Manhattan. The latest one is an exhibit of photos and artworks by a long forgotten mastero: Nasreen Mohamedi.
On exhibit are rare photographic works created by the artist from the early 1960s to the late seventies. These black and white photo works, from the artist’s collection, are being exhibited in their entirety for the first time. The shadowed lines of the steps in a Mughal courtyard, the patterns on a road in Japan, or the lines in the sand on a washed beach all explore the creation and consumption of form by light. Further investigations and experiments with light processing and imaging in certain works result in an unfamiliar yet dreamlike landscape.
The exhibit, Nasreen Mohamedi: Photoworks from Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, opens on September 18th.
The New York Times Magazine:: Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, thinks the new American fad for all things Indian is pretty funny and off base. Let’s start with yoga. She has a new book out. The Namesake is here second shot at literary fame. She did quite well in her debut. The Interpreter of Maladies won a Pulitzer.
I’ve always been very ambivalent about things Indian. I don’t feel pride when I see this stuff happening — I don’t feel that ”we’ve made it.” I don’t feel part of any we. And it’s funny. Nobody I know in India practices yoga. You don’t have people rushing home from their jobs to make it to the 6 o’clock yoga class.
The New York Times has finally discovered Monica Ali’s amazing new book, Brick Lane. Actually they quite like the book.
Ali’s first book has spent most of this summer on the British best-seller lists, a popular success fueled by a critical one: earlier this year, Granta named her as one of Britain’s 20 best young novelists. It was a remarkable choice — she hadn’t yet published a word — but no one who reads ”Brick Lane” will doubt its justice.
