Oct 27 2023 to Oct 27 2023 6 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Film screenings followed by a conversation with the filmmaker Rafeeq Ellias and Anuja Ghosalkar.

Screenings:

If Memory Serves Me Right

English | 45 mins

Rashid Irani once owned a traditional Irani restaurant, the kind that were invariably at the city’s busiest crossroads and are now fast disappearing. But over the decades, Rashid’s heart beat firmly at twenty four frames per second as he traversed many worlds, re-living Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Werner Herzog, Abbas Kiarostami and more; along with books on cinema and poetry.

This is a film about him, his cafe, his neighbourhood and a world of erasure, accelerating in the time of covid. A dedicated bachelor who ‘lived life vicariously through movies’, RIP, Rashid Irani.

Legend of Fat Mama 
English | 23 mins

The sad-happy story of the Chinese community in Calcutta, a nostalgic journey in search of a woman who once made the most delicious noodles in the city’s Chinatown.

Many stories intersect in the film: thriving street food, disappearing family-run eateries, mahjong clubs, a Chinese printing press that has closed down, another that ‘hand writes’ the newspapers every morning, and the first all-woman dragon dance group preparing for the Chinese New Year.

There is pain and hurt too, at the treatment the Chinese received in the aftermath of the Indo-China war, causing many of them to migrate to Canada and elsewhere.

But there is generosity and hope, in the spirit of the New Year; besides the ever-binding ties of tandoori chicken and Hindi cinema!

What Man, Joe! 
English | 36 mins

It’s the story of an East Indian Christian musician, Joe Vessoaker, and the musically rich neighborhood of Bandra in Mumbai.

The Vessoakers have traditionally been fishermen and musicians at funerals over generations; Joe is perhaps the last among them.

But Joe also plays at every other occasion possible. At church at mass (several in a day); teaching at school and home, playing in the tiny by lanes of Bandra in Mumbai, India; at birthdays, weddings and pre-nuptials.

A deeply religious man, childlike in his simplicity, Joe lives and breathes his trumpet every waking minute of the day, which invariably begins at 5 am and lasts well into the night.

An insightful film about a musician, his neighborhood and his faith.