Dallas South Asian Film Festival 2002
Nov. 21st - Nov. 28th Angelika / Everest Theaters
Premiering: Wedded Bliss?

Thursday Nov. 21st 2002 7:30pm at Angelika Theater

A person steps into marriage with a lot of expectations. Two people who are in love often dream about a wedded life full of bliss and romance. They carefully plan their wedding, their honeymoon and every day of their life to follow. However, expectations are often different from reality. The first year or so after marriage is often called the honeymoon period. Nevertheless, many couples experience a time of adjustments - often complicated by many misunderstandings.

Wedded Bliss? follows the story of a young couple that goes through this process. This film is written and directed by Dallas based Devashish Saxena.

Showing at Everest:
11/22 @ 9:30 pm 11/23 @ 7:30 pm
11/24 @ 7:30 pm 11/27 @ 8:00 pm
11/28 @ 8:00 pm 11/28 @ 10:00 pm

Showing at Everest:
11/22 @ 11:00 pm
11/23 @ 5:00 pm
11/27 @ 10:00 pm

Split Wide Open

Kut Price, aka KP, sells tank water to the poor and Evian to the rich. Didi, his ten year old adopted sister, sells flowers on the streets waiting for a miracle to save her. Leela, a student, discovers the unspeakable secrets of her wealthy father. And Nandita, an expatriate recently arrived from London, hosts a hugely popular reality-TV show on which people confess the secrets of their sex lives.

Welcome to Bombay 2000, a city of extremes where globalisation is the buzz word.

Distinctions:
Special Jury Award - Singapore International Film Festival 2000

Showing at Everest:
11/24 @ 10:00 pm
11/25 @ 8:00 pm
 Asphyxiating Uma

Anil Vasvani is a colorless chemist who is quite content with the three things he loves most - books, music and cooking. His only violent tendency, expressed through fantasies, is a belief that some people walking around him exist by mistake, and should be strangled and disposed of to make way for others. Anil's fantasy plays out in a manner even he could not have predicted, weaving his high-flying wife Uma and her cocky boy-friend Dinesh into a murderous plot that no one hatched.

The film has been written and directed by acclaimed director Sujit Saraf whose last film, BUGABOO, was a roaring success in Silicon Valley.

Showing at Everest:
11/23 @ 10:00 pm
 Bugaboo

BUGABOO is a Silicon Valley film. It has been produced by people who live and work in Silicon Valley and who prospered with the high-tech boom of the nineties. The Internet and the personal computer, while creating Silicon Valley, have also created armies of well-paid Indian professionals who lead a curious existence: as professionals they constitute the epicenter of America's recent growth binge, but as individuals they continue to stay inside cocooned, secure Indian communities which are quite divorced from all things American.

"...laugh-out-loud funny" - John Petrakis, Chicago Tribune.

Showing at Everest:
11/24 @ 5:00 pm
11/26 @ 10:00 pm
 Bollywood Bound

A story of four young Canadians looking for fame…Indian style. Raised on a diet of Hindi movies, success in Indian cinema does not seem so far away to these young actors. Follow the ups and downs of Neeru, Vikram, Vekeana and Ruby, already the most famous Canadian in India, from casting calls to auditions and rehearsals - as Bollywood Bound conveys a new twist on an old showbiz tale. Amid the fast-changing world of cultural convergence this is also the story of finding one's own place in the world.

"... highly entertaining docu provides a playful, wry look at four Indo-Canadians" - Ronnie Scheib, Variety.

Showing at Everest:
11/25 @ 10:00 pm
11/26 @ 8:00 pm
 Dollar Dreams

A multi-lingual movie about a group of youngsters in Hyderabad, who make all-out efforts to find a job in the US, only to realise eventually that the one who makes it becomes a misfit in his home country. This movie is based on the fact that 66% of the people who emigrate to the US from India come from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Directed by Harvard educated software engineer turned filmmaker - Sekhar Kammula.

Distinctions:
Best First Film of a Director' - 47th National Film Festival of India.

Showing at Everest:
11/23 @ 2:30 pm
 Narmada: A Valley Rises

This film documents a 200 kilometre non-violent Gandhian march involving 6000 participants. The film offers a compelling and intimate portrait of a unique movement while raises critical and universal issues of human-rights, social justice, and development within a democracy.

"...this film stands in the best tradition of committed filmmaking..." - Now Magazine

Distinctions:
Golden Gate Award - San Francisco International Film Festival 1995; Gold Plaque - Chicago International Film Festival 1995
DSAFF Shorts Program Showing at Everest: 11/24 @ 2:30 pm

A Love Supreme

A tribute to the director's mother who has rheumatoid arthiritis, this audio visual essay on the preparation of samosas is a record of her skilled hands, in case they become affected. The film was inspried by the boxing sequences from Raging Bull.

Distinctions:
Jury Award - Full Frame Documentary Film Festival; Best Cinematography - Sedona Film Festival.
Diwali

A self-revealing story of a young Indian-American who discovers his cultural identity as he attempts to win the love of a beautiful Indian girl.

This film is a romantic comedy that explores love's ability to illuminate truth and inspire change.

Distinctions:
Director's Guild of America Student Film Award; Kodak Student Filmmaker Showcase - Cannes Film Festival.
What's Love Got to Do With It

This 30 minute documentary takes a humorous look at young American Desis who are willingly placing their destiny in the hands of their parents, marriage brokers, and Internet matrimonial ads.

Navigating us through this film is Rupa Gawle - the young, hip, and very single columnist of Sulekha.com.
Birth Of A Butterfly

Filmmaker Kavita Bali shares the world of Sangeeta, a rising corporate Indian-American woman and her discovery of an elusive cultural heritage. Themes of alienation and identity are explored in this poetic portrait of a modern day woman who finds strength in her heritage once she stops running… and ultimately defines her own culture and power.
The Quality of Music

An inspired Japanese high school music teacher travels to Sri Lanka and becomes a beloved reformer of Western music education.

The film attempts to merge the spirit of volunteering with the emotions that can be expressed through music and to explore how the giving of one's time changes one's life and the lives of those who you come into contact with.
Anamika

Kumar, a young East-Indian film enthusiast, sits in a cafe, reading a book on filmmaking. He sees a beautiful Indian girl sitting across from him, reading the same book.

Through his Bollywood style imagination, he imagines dancing with her, and even saving her from an evil thug. But he finds that even his imagination has limitations.
Distant Souls

This film takes us on a surrealistic visual journey through the mind of a young Indian-American woman as she meets her boyfriend at a NYC café one afternoon.

Emotions are poetically captured by the camera’s fluid movements as the young woman explores her two worlds of existence.
http://www.nrifilms.com/DSAFF - dreamz@nrifilms.com - (214) 292-9492
Buy tickets online at: http://dallas.eknazar.com
Everest Theaters (972) 514-1414 - NW corner of Story Rd/Irving Blvd, Irving
Angelika Theater (214) 841-4700 - 5321 E Mockingbird Ln, Dallas