I For India
Screening Time
Friday, May 28, 3:00pm
Film Trailer
Documentary/ England / Italy / Germany / 2005/ 70 minutes
Director：Sandhya Suri
Language : Hindi & English w/ English subtitles
‘As a second-generation immigrant, could I convey the complex, bitter-sweet yearning for home which had plagued and comforted my father for so many years ?’ — Sandhya Suri
In 1965, Yash Pal Suri left India for the U.K. The first thing he did upon his arrival to England was buy two Super 8 cameras, two projectors and two reel to reel recorders. One set of equipment he sent to his family in India, the other he kept for himself…
For forty years, he uses the equipment to share his new life abroad with those back home: images of snow, mini-skirted ladies dancing bare-legged, his first trip to an English supermarket. His taped thoughts and observations provide a unique chronicle of the eccentricities of his new English hosts. Back in India, his relatives respond in turn, with their own ‘cine-letters’ telling tales of weddings, festivals and village life.
As time passes and the planned return to India becomes an increasingly remote possibility, the joys and curiosities of earlier exchanges give way to the darker reality of alienation, racism and family disintegration.
Created around her family’s personal archive of footage, Suri’s I for India is an intense, heart-rending account of history and home.
Awards
Best Documentary, Asian Festival of First Films Silver Award, Film South Asia (2006)
Nomination, Grand Jury Prize, World Cinema, Sundance Film Festival (2006)
About Sandhya Suri
After graduating with first class honours degree in Mathematics and German, Sandhya Suri received a scholarship to study documentary at The National Film and Television School. Her graduation film, Safar, was shown at a number of international film festivals, receiving the Juryʼs special mention at Cinema du Reel and the award for Best Short Film at the British Film Instituteʼs Imagine Asia festival. Currently based in London, Suri has lived in Germany, India and Japan, and has worked on documentary projects in Africa, South America and Polynesia. I for India is her first feature length documentary.
Click here to read I FOR INDIA press kit.
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