Event 31
'I for India' by Yash Pal Suri
Documentary Screening 2
– The Reading Room, Kanakakunnu Palace
A classic exploration of immigration and exchange between England and India. In 1965 Yash Pal Suri leaves India for the UK. The first thing he does on his arrival in England is to buy 2 Super 8 cameras, 2 projectors and 2 reel-to-reel recorders. One set of equipment he sends to his family in India, the other he keeps for himself. For forty years he uses it to share his new life abroad with those back home – images of snow, miniskirted ladies dancing bare-legged, the first trip to an English supermarket – his taped thoughts and observations providing a unique chronicle of the eccentricities of his new English hosts.
Back in India, his relatives in turn respond 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 joy and curiosity of the early exchanges give way to the darker reality of alienation, racism and a family falling apart.
70 minutes. 2005. USA.
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