Hidden Gems brings best of Indian cinema to Calgary
The Hidden Gems Film Festival is now in its ninth year and continues to offer Calgarians a glimpse of the very best cinema being created in Indian and by its neighbours.
Each year, Niru Bhatia, the founder and executive director of Hidden Gems, attends the major film festivals in India to find the eight films she feels are indicative of the new cinema in India.
All films and the award winning shorts Bhatia has chose to precede several of the films will be screened in the amphitheatre of the Alberta College of Art and Design in the building adjacent to the Jubilee Auditorium.
For 30 minutes before each film the Chai Cafe will be open. with a mesmerizing double feature.
The first offering, a 30 minute film called Leeches, looks at the deplorable institution of bride for a day.
A man arranges with a broker to draw up simultaneously marriage and divorce papers.
The broker must promise the http://www.cheapjerseys11.com/ girl is young and a virgin.
In Leeches, the older sister of the 13 year old girl who has been chosen for this particular Muslim businessman, hatches a plan to take this child’s place but she must somehow restore her own virginity.
Ancient customs meet with modern chicanery in this taut little drama.
The main film is Aynabaji which is even more serpentine than Leeches.
The central character runs cheap jerseys an acting school for children, but it is his sideline job that is so intriguing.
In Bangladesh, where the film is set, people are not finger printed or photographed when they go to prison to await their trials.
The acting teacher impersonates wealthy criminals awaiting their trials which will be rigged in their favour.
He’s the great impostor, much like Leonardo DiCaprio was in Catch Me If You Can, but a young journalist is trying to expose the scam given that he’s helping criminals avoid punishment.
There are some great twists in this little thriller. on April 29.
Two of India’s largest papers gave coverage to the fact this film is having is premiere screening in Calgary.
It’s a fantasy driven tale of a poet and a painter who each claim possession of the same idea which is represented by a beautiful woman. Hidden Gems will screen Cinemawala and this couldn’t be a better choice for a festival.
It’s a film that laments the death of the movie halls or movie palaces in India, something Calgary has seen happen as well.
Gone are Calgary’s once magnificent single screen cinemas such as The Palace, The Uptown, The Grand and The Strand. They are replaced by the multiplexes but, in the case of Cinemawala, an even worse curse befalls them in pirated DVDs.
The father in the film ran one of his neighbourhood’s great cinema halls but people like his own son have stolen the audiences with their cheap pirated DVDs.
Cinemawala is a bittersweet family drama and, once again, you’re not likely to see the twists coming.
It’s a film that exposes some of the major problems with current educational systems such as the reliance on examinations and the labelling of students as academic and non academic.
A new physics teacher is given a class in the D or lowest division but she refuses to treat these students as disadvantaged and this causes major problems with the school’s administrators.