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Not
an aberration, it’s Asian
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| RACE,
CULTURE, FAITH: still from Yasmin |
The London
Film festival is Europe’s largest public film event. This year boasts
several films with a South Asian focus. Love, race, rebellion, belonging
— PRIYANKA GILL tracks their myriad moods, concerns
and storylines
The London Film
festival is Europe’s largest public film event, showcasing 280 films
from 60 countries. For nearly two weeks every year, Londoners are treated
to a feast of some of the best new films from across the world. This year
boasts several films with a South Asian focus and four British films reflecting
on the issues of race and colour from different perspectives.
Ian Iqbal Rashid’s debut film, Touch of Pink is a cross-cultural
romance of gay lovers guided by the ghost of Cary Grant, and it has more
than one twist. Jimi Mistry plays a young Muslim Canadian living in London
who is still in the closet as far as his family goes. Then his mother visits
him and the trouble starts. His confidante is a suave Hollywood star, played
by Kyle MacLachlan, who pops up to proffer much needed advice. The angst
of looking for a partner and telling his mother that the partner of his
dreams is not only not the woman of her choice, but a man, is what occupies
the filmmaker.
An unpretentious romantic comedy in the tradition of Hollywood escapist
fare, Touch of Pink has received mixed reviews. The role of the
confused Alim is a cakewalk for Mistry, who has played similar roles in
the past and also had his personal experience to draw upon. Born to an Indian
father and Irish mother, he was brought up as a strict Catholic. Before
the screening he told the audience, “Like the central character, I
am of Indian origin, was born in East Africa, grew up in Canada and now
live in London — all places, by the way, that have had a brush with
colonialism.” But he also acknowledged that the most powerful “colonial”
force in his life has been Hollywood – the reason why he wanted to
make an old fashioned Hollywood style comedy, “but with someone like
myself at the centre”.
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| POVERTY
AND PREJUDICE: still from A Way of Life |
On a more serious note,
in Yasmin, director Kenny Glenaan deals with the complexity of
being Asian, Muslim and British in a post 9/11 world. Having rebelled against
her Pakistani upbringing as a teenager, self-assured Yasmin (Archie Panjabi)
juggles her everyday working and social life’s western orientation
with the traditional culture at home. Post 9/11 she goes through what many
Muslims faced in real life: she finds herself ostracised at work, and is
subjected to unconcealed Islamphobia. Her husband is nabbed by the police
and held without charges. This is the turning point in Yasmin’s life.
She is forced to re-evaluate her faith, her culture and her relationships.
The film deals with the reality of being an Asian in Britain, facing discrimination
on the basis of race, despite assimilation into the prevailing cosmopolitan
ethos.
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November
13, 2004
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