COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Two Indian Films At Asian American Film Festival

Arthur J Pais in New York

Karma Local, a comedy about immigrant life in New York City, directed by newcomer Darshan Bhagat, and Mira Nair's made-for television film, My Own Country are being shown this week at the Asian American Film Festival here.

Bhagat also acts in Karma Local, shot mostly in New York. The film, completed last year, has traveled to half a dozen film festivals and garnered decent reviews. Bhagat, who has a master's degree in film-making from New York University, says his film offers a multicultural perspective of the immigration process in America.

My Own Country, based on Dr Abraham Verghese's celebrated memoir, is the story of unusual friendships forged under trying circumstances.

Navin Andrews (The English Patient) plays Verghese, a young Indian doctor specializing in infectious diseases in Johnson City, a small Tennessee city.

By necessity Dr Verghese becomes the local AIDS expert, besieged by a number of male and female patients whose stories haunt him. Many of the patients had gone away from Johnson City as they were unable to reveal to their families they were gay but they were returning home to die, hoping for reconciliation with their families.

As Verghese observes some successful and some failed attempts at reconciliation, he also realizes that since he is an outsider, many of his patients are telling him their innermost stories and feelings which they cannot share with their own kith and kin.

Verghese, who always longed to be a writer but had been dissuaded by his parents into taking up that profession, takes off one full year, and in his mid 40s embarks on a year-long master's program in writing at Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Despite his marriage crumbling and a new job at an inner city hospital in El Paso, Verghese makes time to write his memoir, which Time magazine called "one of the best books of the year" in 1995.

The book is a "medical journey into the heart of a community," wrote best-selling writer Kaye Gibbons. Walker Percy once called a character "an old-fashioned physician of the soul". Dr Verghese could claim this title as his own.

"A startling and disturbing book, yet as fine and lyrical as anything I've read in a long time," wrote Gibbons.

The Mira Nair movie shown last year by Showtime received mixed reviews. But Dr Verghese found it "authentic and thought-provoking".

My Own Country will be shown on July 25, 5 pm. It is 106 minutes long and will be followed by the 84-minute long Karma Local at 7 pm.

The Path to Myself collection of short films, including The Mischievous Ravi, directed by Byron Shah will be shown at 1 pm on July 31.

The festival is being held at the Florence Gould Hall/French Institute, 55 East 59th Street in Manhattan.

Bhagat and Nair's movies are also shown in Brooklyn as part of the festival on August 8. My Own Country is at 3 pm and Karma Local at 5 pm at Brooklyn Heights Cinema, 70 Henry Street.

For Tickets Call: Asian CineVision, (212) 925-6014, Brooklyn Heights Cinema (718) 596-7070/ 7124; Florence Gould Hall Box Office (212) 355-6160.

( Aseem Chhabra also contributed for this story)

Previous story: Grand jury indicts Indians for hijacking Cuban boat
Next story: Time for Summer Jamm '99

Tell us what you think of this report