3rd i

Big in Bollywood
2012-09-30 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Camera 12, 201 S 2nd Street, San Jose, CA, United States
Watch Trailer
Funny and irreverent, Big in Bollywood documents Omi Vaidya’s ascendency from an aspiring Indian American actor in Hollywood to a megastar in far away Bollywood. When 27-year-old American-born Omi, a struggling actor in L.A. miraculously lands a dream role in the Bollywood ﬁlm 3 Idiots (2010), his curious friends, armed with cameras, ﬂy to Mumbai to film and document his big premiere and better understand the world of Bollywood. Within a week of release, 3 Idiots skyrockets to the top of the box office, becoming the most successful Indian ﬁlm of all time. From relative obscurity to the heights of Bollywood stardom, Omi finds himself in the company of Bollywood stalwarts like Aamir Khan. While Omi deals with the challenges of new found fame and struggles with cultural competency in the strange, new world that is Bollywood — between language classes, calls to his wife back in the United States, a press tour that routinely gathers tens of thousands of people — he cheerfully greets strangers on the street who know him only as the “fourth idiot.”

Azhagarsamy’s Horse
2012-09-30 13:00 - 15:00 | Camera 12, 201 S 2nd Street, San Jose, CA, United States
This family-friendly Tamil film mixes comedy, romance, melodrama and musical montage sequences to serve up a gentle satire of rural traditions and superstitions. The small village of Mallayapuram is frantic when they realize the holy wooden statue of god Azhagarsamy’s horse is missing from the local temple. When a real horse turns up soon after, people are convinced it is the wooden horse come to life bringing luck to the drought-stricken village. However when a man named (coincidentally?) Azhagarsamy arrives claiming the horse is his, the entire village turns topsy-turvy in this delightful comic romp. Set in the lush landscapes of the Theni Hills in Tamil Nadu, Azhagarsamy’s Horse features a lively soundtrack that integrate folk forms with Western beats by composer Illayaraj, and a standout performance by the unconventional leading man Appukkutty. An audience favorite at the Toronto and Chicago Film Festivals!
PLEASE NOTE: We are sorry to inform you that the 35mm print of this film being screened at Camera12 DOES NOT HAVE English subtitles. We will provide a detailed printed plot summary for non-Tamil speakers.

Valley of Saints
2012-09-23 18:30 | Roxie Theater, 94103
Watch Trailer
Lyrical romance and lush cinematography intermingle in this neorealist feature debut that was a major award winner at the Sundance Film Festival. The breathtaking Dal Lake in Kashmir is a sprawling aquatic community where erupting political violence often distracts from natural beauty. Gulzar, a young, working-class boatman, navigates the floating landscape and dreams of a better life. When he takes on a job assisting a Kashmiri-American scientist to collect water samples for her environmental study, everything in his own life begins to take on a new hue. Syeed intricately weaves together contemporary ecological issues with traditional culture, and deftly captures the unlikely romance that blossoms between the boatman and the scientist. The standout soundtrack for the film features music by Kashmiri-American band Zerobridge.

Adda: Calcutta/Kolkata
2012-09-23 16:45 | Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Adda is one of those Bengali words that is so difficult to translate into English. A gossip session, an intellectual discussion, a never-ending conversation all rolled into one, adda is the quintessential Bengali pastime. Following a number of ongoing addas at street corners, cafes, markets and living rooms, this documentary by Surjo Deb and Ranjan Palit is a free-flowing, intimate portrait of a city and its people in a time of transition: as malls and high-rises replace the old architecture of the skyline, youngsters move out of the city looking for better opportunities, the traffic gets worse and the city’s name changes from Calcutta to Kolkata. Co-director Ranjan Palit is a National Award-winning filmmaker, whose film In Camera was showcased at 3rd i’s SFISAFF 2010.

Okul Nodi (Endless River) + I am Micro
2012-09-23 16:30 | Roxie Theater, 94103
For lovers of that disappearing medium we call celluloid (or film), we bring two docs that can only be described as visual poetry. Okul Nodi (Tuni Chatterji, Co-directed by Clay Dean, 2012, Bangladesh, 52mins, Bengali with English subtitles) examines the origins of Bhatiyali, the river music of Bangladesh. Soulful and nostalgic, Bhatiyali songs often rest on dual meanings wherein boats become bodies and lovers are also lost gods. Chatterji uses innovative sound editing and lingers on the materiality of the 16mm film to create a contemplative dialogue between music, landscape and the ephemeral quality of cinema.
Shot on exquisite 35mm, I am Micro (Shumona Goel/Shai Heredia, 2011, India, 14mins, English and Hindi with English subtitles) combines imagery from an optical factory and behind-the-scenes footage from a film production (Miss Lovely) against the memories of an experimental filmmaker (Kamal Swaroop) to deliver an ode to independent cinema.

Family Album
2012-09-23 15:00 | Roxie Theater, 94103
Family Album is a powerful meditation on the tangled relationship between memory, history, and the photograph, and is a companion piece to Jain’s earlier City of Photos, an exploration of the little-known world of neighborhood photo studios which was an audience favorite at 3rd i’s SFISAFF 2006. Jain interviews members from some of Calcutta’s oldest families as they page through family albums and portraits in their ancestral homes. Jain elicits some astonishing stories – a wife whose husband photographed her in men’s clothing, a romantic portrait of a man and his dead wife, images of women studying, dressing-up, playing music – as they negotiate the lines between freedom and enclosure. Family Album is ultimately an evocative, rewarding film that showcases Jain’s innovative use of storytelling in documentary as a way to capture the imagination. Jain’s films have been shown extensively in Europe and in India, and her documentary Lakshmi and Me (3rd i’s SFISAFF 2009) was featured on PBS’ Independent Lens Film series.

Herman’s House
2012-09-23 13:45 | Roxie Theater, 94103
Watch Trailer
The injustice of solitary confinement and the transformative power of art are explored in Herman’s House, a must-see documentary that was an official selection of the Sundance Institute and the prestigious HotDocs festival. Former Black Panther Herman Wallace was languishing in solitary confinement when he received a letter from a young artist/activist, Jackie Sumell, posing a provocative question: “What kind of house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?” Bhalla documents the process and the final art project that results from this initial letter: a striking installation that brings thousands of gallery visitors face to face with the injustices of the American prison system. Another terrific example of South Asian directors coming into the mainstream with stories about the universal human experience.
Panel discussion following film with:
Angad Bhalla, Filmmaker
Raphael Sperry, former president of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) an organization involved in creating awareness about the moral issues surrounding prison design
Laura Magnani of the American Friends Service Committee, involved in advocating prison reform among other peace building initiatives
Richard Kamler, Artist (The Waiting Room and Table of Voices, large installations that deal with prisons) and a former artist-in-residence at San Quentin Prison

Jagte Raho (Stay Awake)
2012-09-23 12:15 | Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Classic
Something of a departure for Kapoor, Jagte Raho is a joint Bengali-Hindi film with expressionist touches meant to provide a comic yet critical survey of middle class life in India’s cities. Kapoor plays a familiar role: a poor wanderer from the country, he enters an apartment building in search of a drink of water. Taken as a thief by the inhabitants, he flees from flat to flat, encountering a cross-section of the building’s inhabitants. Kapoor produced this film for collaborators he had met through his father’s work in the theater and the leftist Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association. Co-director Sombhu Mitra was one of the giants of 20th-century Bengali theater, while scenarist K.A. Abbas – who also worked on Awaara – was a prominent writer, critic and director and a major founder of India’s “parallel” cinema. The outstanding songs were composed by Salil Choudary and feature Shailendra’s poetry.
– Harvard Film Archive

Sikh I Am: Voices on Identity
2012-09-23 12:00 | Roxie Theater, 94103
Three American-Sikhs assert and articulate their identity from a male perspective in this program of short docs.
Christina Antonakos-Wallace’s Article of Faith (2011, USA, 10 mins, in English) is a portrait of NY-based activist Sonny Singh, as he inspires New York City Sikh-youth to stand up for themselves and combat harassment in their schools. This segment is part of a larger documentary, with WINGS and ROOTS, that is currently in production.
Sikligar (2012, India, 23 mins, in Punjabi and Marvi with English subtitles) is a documentary by Mandeep Sethi about the hidden story of the Sikligar Sikhs, the black-ironsmiths and weapons makers of the Khalsa Army of the Sikhs.
Harjant Gill’s Roots of Love (2011, India, 26mins, in English and Punjabi with English subtitles) examines the changing significance of the turban among Sikhs in India, where the choice of cutting one’s hair is one that not only concerns the individual and his family, but an entire community.
Followed by a discussion moderated by Simran Kaur (from the The Sikh Coalition).
pictured above: Sonny Singh in Article of Faith

Cocktail
2012-09-22 21:30 - 2012-09-23 00:00 | Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA, 94114, United States
Bollywood at the Castro
Watch trailer.
A great cocktail needs the right mix – and this one only delivers but packs a punch, and a twist! Homi Adjania takes the classic masala love triangle – complete with song and dance and high camp – and gives it a modern flavor (did someone say threesome?) in this recent blockbuster from Bollywood. Imtiaz Ali’s (director of Jab We Met and Rockstar) script keeps it fresh and tangy, and Anil Mehta’s camerawork gives it style and flair. Saif Ali Khan (Omkara, Dil Chahtha Hai) and Deepika Padukone (Om Shanti Om) look their sexiest selves, Bollywood newcomer Diana Penty shines, and Dimple Kapadia and Boman Irani deliver excellent performances as Gautam’s doting parents.

3rd i’s Castro Reception with the Filmmakers
2012-09-22 20:00 - 21:15 | Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA, 94114, United States
Advance tickets are $20/ticket (plus minimal processing fee).
At- the-door tickets are $20 and can be purchased at the Castro Box Office.
All passes INCLUDE entry to the reception. Purchase Passes Here.
Meet all our festival guests up close and personal!
Enjoy food and drinks, get you photos with our celebrity guests, and let the DJ get your feet wet for our Bollywood at the Castro screening.
Special guests at this year’s festival include: journalists and filmmakers, Jon Shenk and Gotham Chopra; Bengali filmmakers, Surjo Deb (Calcutta) and Amit Ashraf (Dhaka); American filmmakers Tuni Chatterjee (from LA), and Angad Bhalla (from NY); and a kaleidoscope of Bay Area talent including musicians/filmmakers Mandeep Sethi, Biz Kulfi and Single Beige Female.
The reception will also host the PopUp Production Showcase which will showcase stills from a selection of films by Bay Area filmmakers that are currently in production.
See highlights from past receptions at 3rd i’s SFISAFF.

Decoding Deepak
2012-09-22 18:45 | Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA, 94114, United States
Watch Trailer
An audience favorite at the SXSW Film Festival, this intriguing portrait of Deepak Chopra has a raw honesty to it that only a son can bring. Filmmaker and journalist Gotham Chopra embarks on a year long road trip with his father in an attempt to resolve the spiritual icon from the family man. The journey takes him across the planet chronicling Deepak’s colorful activities – from a traditional monk ordainment in Thailand to a literal decoding of ancient family registers in rural India. Along the way, we meet devoted disciples who range from celebrities like Lady Gaga to lost souls in the red rock deserts of Sedona. Interwoven through the travelogue is a closer look at the expansive spiritual empire built over the last 25 years – from a decidedly non-spiritual (and boozy) origin. Full of flaws, foils, intelligence, and irreverence, the decoded Deepak is a symbol of a world searching for answers in the most unlikely places and a deeper plunge into the meaning of identity itself.

Lucky
2012-09-22 16:30 - 18:30 | Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA, 94114, United States
Watch Trailer
Delicately crafted, both in story and visual style, this beautiful, emotional tale explores the unusual alliance between an elderly Indian woman (with a irrational fear of Africans) and a South African orphan in post-Apartheid South Africa. Using a muted color palette to reflect themes of nostalgia and family connection, Luthra unravels a complicated story featuring amazing performances from the two main actors. Filmed in Zulu, Hindi, and English, Lucky is a true international production and represents a trend we are seeing in this year’s festival (along with Herman’s House and Sket) of South Asian directors telling stories from a multiplicity of viewpoints and cultural voices. A critical and audience favorite, Lucky is based on Luthra’s earlier short of the same name, which won over 40 international awards including an Oscar nomination.

The World Before Her
2012-09-22 14:30 - 17:00 | Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA, 94114, United States
Watch Trailer
Sneak Peek. Young, beautiful, and ambitious, Ankita and Ruhi compete in the Miss India pageant for the chance at a career in the beauty industry, one of the few opportunities for women to find success and empowerment in contemporary India. On the opposite end of the spectrum from Miss India is Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the Hindu fundamentalist movement. Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her dramatizes the tension between traditional and modern perspectives toward women in today’s India through the juxtaposition of these two very different outlets for girls. Initially representing the two threads as mutually exclusive worldviews, Pahuja ultimately draws surprising parallels in the way women are perceived and the opportunities that are afforded them at both extremes, convincingly depicting each as real sources of both oppression and empowerment. The World Before Her is a riveting, thoughtful profile of the fundamental contradictions of a country in transition.
– Tribeca Film Festival

Alms for a Blind Horse (Anhey Ghodey Da Daan)
2012-09-22 12:00 | Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street, San Francisco, CA, 94114, United States
Watch Trailer
This striking film by first-time director Gurvinder Singh uses exquisite cinematography and an unusual cast of characters to portray a day in the life of a rural Punjabi family facing the demolition of their village. Indian film legend, the late Mani Kaul, was the executive producer on the film and his influence can been seen throughout in the film’s use of stillness, silences and non-naturalistic approach to narrative. A beautiful soundtrack by Los Angeles based composer Catherine Lamb accentuates the poetic performances given by the non-professional cast. Alms for a Blind Horse swept the Indian National Film awards this spring and is the first Punjabi language film to hit the festival circuit.

3rd i International Shorts
2012-09-21 21:40 - 23:30 | Roxie Theater, 94103
Four startling shorts examine the limits of human desire in the face of life and death:
A nun hides her daughter in a monastery against the army’s advance, and attempts to move past the memories of civil war, in this visually sublime short Ennakum Oru Per (I Too Have a Name, 2012, USA/Sri Lanka, 12 mins, in Sinhalese and Tamil with English subtitles). Official selection at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival.
Chandi’s mother is dying. When the local doctor can’t help, Chandi turns to the Tantrik holy man, who demands a terrible price in return for her mother’s life, in Smita Bhide’s unforgettable Another Planet (2011, UK, 26 mins, in English and Marathi with English subtitles). Winner of Best Short at the 2012 International Film Festival of India, Goa.
Shilpa Munikempanna’s Kaveri (2011, India, 19 mins, in Kannada with English subtitles) is a simple story of two sisters transformed into a moving experience. 13 year old Kaveri is on the threshold of womanhood. Engulfed by the vastness of the adult world, she searches for the gesture that provides hope. Watch Trailer.
An eco-thriller set in a parched post-apocalyptic future, where water has become a scarce and invaluable commodity, Abhishek Pathak’s Boond (A Drop, 2009, India, 27 mins, in Hindi with English subtitles) tells the story of a desperate young mother and her son who are forced to take up the gun in order to protect their well. Watch Trailer.
pictured above: Suba Sivakumaran’s I Too Have a Name

Runaway (Udhao)
2012-09-21 19:15 - 21:30 | Roxie Theater, 94103
Watch Trailer
Amit Ashraf’s dynamic script and creative visual vocabulary confirm that something is afoot in Bangladeshi cinema. The gritty, urban streets of Dhaka provide the backdrop for this noirish thriller about men who run away from family and a rickshawallah who is compelled to bring them to justice. Ashraf’s innovative editing and cinematography help to shape this film’s treatment of a common social phenomenon, creating a striking and rarely seen depiction of contemporary Dhaka. An audience favorite at multiple festivals this year, Runaway delivers a layered story filled with visual excitement.

Dance, Desi, Dance: 3rd i's Birthday Bash
2012-09-20 22:00 - 2012-09-21 00:00 | 780 Cafe, 780 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA, United States
Tickets are $10/ticket (plus minimal processing fee for online purchase).
3rd i’s SFISAFF turns 10 this year!
And we’d love to see you at our dance party for the decade! Come celebrate cinema, celebrate 3rd i, and feel the vibe of the Bay Area’s vibrant desi arts community.
DJs Chungtech (Sweaterfunk) and Smokestack (Accepted Eclectic) will spin an aural adventure – from retro-bollywood to 80s to funk to fusion!
Come celebrate with us at the 780 Cafe, conveniently located at 780 Valencia (between 18th St & 19th St), right around the corner from the Roxie Theater.

Sket
2012-09-20 21:30 | Roxie Theater, 94103
Watch Trailer
Set to a pounding soundtrack of hip-hop and electronica, this gritty thriller by director Nirpal Bhogal follows members of a girl gang in East London. After her sister is brutally attacked by Trey and his fellow gang members, sixteen-year old Kayla casts about for ways to exact revenge. Joining a rival girl gang, Kayla is drawn into a brutal world of initiation ceremonies and crime in order to prove her worth. Bhogal and the film’s producers were struck by accounts of rising female gang violence in recent years, including a particularly vicious gay-bashing incident that drew comparisons to a scene from Clockwork Orange. Developed through interviews and collaboration with youth from the East London housing estates, Sket packs a visual and narrative punch. Bhogal’s inventive take on British genre cinema won him a place on the London Film Festival’s Best Newcomer list.

Coast to Coast: Home Grown Shorts
2012-09-20 19:15 - 21:00 | Roxie Theater, 94103
3rd i’s shorts program goes coast-to-coast this year, with a kaleidoscope of short films from the shores of California to New York.
Aliens, bicycles, Punjabi food and Sikh pride are the fodder for new music videos by Bay Area musicians and hip-hop artists: 50 Shades of Beige (Single Beige Female, 2012, USA, 6 mins, in English); The Cycle Beat (Tony Welch, 2012, USA, 3.5 mins, in English); Mandeep Sethi’s Unfilmed Fantasia (Rahat Mahajan, 2012, USA, 3.5mins, in English); Biz Kulfi’s Khala Peela (Harjot Singh, 2012, USA, 3.5 mins, in English).
Other emerging Bay Area filmmakers include Abhi Singh and Rucha Humnabadkar: Singh’s Americanized (2012, USA, 4mins, in English) is the portrait of a Sikh teenager caught between two worlds, while Humnabadkar’s Arranged Marriage (2012, USA, 8mins, in English) offers a humorous twist on immigrant identity.
Humor is also aplenty in Fawzia Mirza and Ryan Logan’s The Queen of my Dreams (2011, USA, 3 mins, in English), a queer send-up on 70s Bollywood. While Shazia Shrivastava’s Do Pahar (2011, India, 29 mins, in Hindi with English subtitles), which was co-directed and co-scripted with her mother Sharifa Roy, is a captivating drama about the beginnings of a friendship between an old woman and a hit man – one that will change both their lives forever. Watch Do Pahar Trailer.
Sushma Khadepaun-Parmar’s Clay (2012, USA, 12mins, in English and Bengali with English subtitles) is a gorgeous tapestry of sound and image, about ‘letting go’, and The Monkey Man is an excerpt from the feature doc Jugaadoo (Kumar/Alex/Colin, India/USA, 2012,10.5 mins), the story of three friends on a journey across India and the various people they meet along the way.
Join us for Dance, Desi, Dance: 3rd i’s Birthday Bash later that evening, and meet many of the filmmakers up close and personal!

The Island President
2012-09-19 19:15 - 21:15 | Roxie Theater, 94103
Watch Trailer
An inspiring, pictorially dazzling documentary from one of the Bay Area’s most exciting filmmakers! Jon Shenk’s The Island President is the story of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, a man confronting a problem greater than any other world leader has ever faced—the literal survival of his country and everyone in it. After bringing democracy to the Maldives after thirty years of despotic rule, Nasheed is now faced with an even greater challenge: as one of the most low-lying countries in the world, a rise of three feet in sea level would submerge the 1200 islands of the Maldives enough to make them uninhabitable. The film follows Nasheed during his first year in office, culminating with a stirring speech given at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009. Just this February, Nasheed was forced out of office in a coup d’etat, lending this film an unusual timeliness and poignancy.
