Immigration to the United States is back in the conversation with Lee Isaac Chung’s
Minari being nominated for the Oscars. The film follows a South Korean family’s efforts to eke out a living in Arkansas. The culture clash and dislocation that accompany Korean immigrants to the land of easy promise and hard-won victories have previously been examined in films such as
Deep Blue Night (1985) and
America, America (1988).
In
Minari, the family is the unit through which tensions play out. The similarly life-altering experience of an Indian immigrant family is the focus of Mira Nair’s
Mississippi Masala (1991).
The film
Deepa Mehta s Fire arrives advertised as the first Indian film about lesbianism. Among other recent Indian productions (according to the Hindu, the national newspaper) are films about tranvestism, eunuchs, sadomasochism and male homosexuality. Along with Mira Nair s Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love released earlier this year, Fire seems to be part of a new freedom in films from the subcontinent.
Both of these films, directed by women, resent a social system in which many women have no rights. Neither is an angry polemic; the directors cloak their anger in melodrama, in romance, in beautiful photography, and in the sort of gentle sexuality that is often more erotic than explicit, if only because it allows us to watch the story without becoming distracted by the documentary details.
2020, the year of resilience in theatre: Practitioners and institutions rose to the challenges of an unprecedented crisis The pandemic presented endless opportunities for theatrewallahs to rally together as a networked community beyond the usual barriers of geography or language. Vikram Phukan December 24, 2020 09:32:34 IST Representational image via Facebook/Drama School of Mumbai
For the theatre community, the last month of the year is usually a time for winding down, taking stock, balancing the books (sparse as they might be), and carefully putting away the implements of a year-long engagement with the practice. Then again, in this uncommon year, that was perhaps all one could do over months of uncertainties and speculation, spent milling in the uncanny limbo of an entire trade brought to a grinding halt by a super-spreading virus.