US Screening Schedule Nov 1-12

THE SCREENINGS WILL TAKE PLACE IN NEW YORK CITY, OBERLIN, CHICAGO, URBANA CHAMPAIGN AND PROVIDENCE


IN NEW YORK (3 SCREENINGS)

DATE: Nov.1
FILM: Q2P (discussion with director, moderated by Dr. Martin Roberts)
TIME: 6-8 p.m.
PLACE: The New School
66 West 12th Street, Rm. 404
Contact Person: Martin Roberts - RobertsM@newschool.edu
(Organized by The New School for General Studies Bachelor’s Program, the India-China Institute, and the South Asian Faculty Forum

DATE: Friday Nov. 2
FILMS: COSMOPOLIS:TWO TALES OF A CITY and WHERE’S SANDRA?
(reception to precede screening and discussion with director)
TIME: 6-8 p.m.
PLACE: Tamarind Art Gallery
www.tamarindart.com

DATE: Saturday Nov. 3
FILM: Q2P (discussion with director, moderated by Dr. Arvind Rajagopal)
TIME: 11 a.m.-12.15 p.m.
PLACE: Centre for Architecture
536, LaGuardia Place
CONTACT PERSON: Nicole Derise- nicole.derise@nyu.edu
(Organized by American Institute of Architects, NY, NYU Office of Campus Planning and Design, NYU's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, Department of Media, Culture and Communication, Center for Religion and Media and the Council for Media and Culture)


IN OBERLIN, OHIO
DATE: Nov. 5
FILM: Q2P
TIME: 7:30 PM
PLACE: West Lecture Hall (A162)
Science Center,
Oberlin College
Contact persons: Nayeem Mahbub- Nayeem.Manbub@oberlin.edu
Ethan Cowan: production.coordinator@oberlin.edu, 440-775-8708
(Organized by Department of Cinema Studies)

CHICAGO
DATE: Wednesday, Nov. 7
FILM: Q2P (discussion with director, moderated by Dr. William Mazzarela)
TIME:6.30 – 8.30 p.m.
PLACE: DePaul University
Levan-Room 100
2320 N.Kenmore
Contact person: Kalyani Menon- kmenon@depaul.edu
(Organised by –

URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
DATE: Nov.9
FILM: Q2P
TIME: 3 pm, Friday Nov 9
PLACE: Lucy Ellis Lounge(1080 FLB)
UIUC
Contact person: Ritu Saksena: rsaksena@uiuc.edu

PROVIDENCE
DATE: Monday November 12
FILM: Q2P
TIME: 6 PM
PLACE: Macmillan Hall 117 (Brown University, entrance on 167 Thayer Street OR on George Street between Brook and Thayer)
CONTACT: pooja_rangan@brown.edu
Organized by – The Department of Modern Culture and Media

Q2P@PLANET IN FOCUS

Sunday, October 28, 2007 - 3:00pm - Innis College Town Hall

http://www.planetinfocus.org/festival/q2p

ABOUT Q2P

Q2P
Documentary, Digital Video, 53 min., English/Hindi

CREDITS
Producer: PUKAR Director: PAROMITA VOHRA Camera: AJAY NORONHA Editing: JABEEN MERCHANT Sound: ANITA KUSHWAHA, SAMINA MISHRA Animation: SHILPA RANADE Music: TARUN SHAHANI, NIRAV GANDHI Narrator TUHINAA VOHRA

REVIEWS
http://www.boloji.com/wfs5/wfs739.htm
http://www.karmayog.org/bmc/bmc_1070.htm
http://www.mid-day.com/smd/play/2006/August/142463.htm

SYNOPSIS
Who is dreaming up the global city? Q2P peers through the dream of a futuristic Mumbai and finds…public toilets… not enough of them.

As this film observes who has to queue to pee, we begin to understand the imagination of gender that underlies the city’s shape and the constantly shifting boundaries between public and private space. We meet whimsical people with novel ideas of social change, which thrive with mixed results. We learn of small acts of survival that people in the city’s bottom half cobble together. In the Museum of Toilets, at a night concert, in a New Delhi “international toilet”, in a Bombay slum, we hear the silence that surrounds toilets and sense how similar it is to the silence that surrounds inequality. The toilet becomes a riddle with many answers and some of those answers are questions – about gender, about class, about caste and most of all about space, urban development and the twisted myth of the global metropolis.

AWARDS:
Best documentary, IFFLA, Los Angeles, 2007; Best Documentary, Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart, 2007
MUSEUM/EXHIBITION SCREENINGS: TATE MODERN GLOBAL CITIES EXHIBIT, 2007; LILLE 3000, 2006; BONN BIENNALE, 2006
FESTIVALS: Royal Anthopology Institute Film Festival, Manchester, Film Festival de Popoli, Ecovisione Film Festival, Florence, Planet in Focus, Toronto, IFFLA, Bollywood and Beyond, Stuttgart, 3 Screens Film Festival, ISF New Delhi,


FOR ENQUIRIES CONTACT- Paromita Vohra: parodevi@gmail.com

WEB LINKS

About Where's Sandra?

WHERE'S SANDRA?
(18 min. Doc/Short, DV, English)
Produced by: CELEBRATE BANDRA TRUST Directed by: PAROMITA VOHRA Camera: AVIJIT MUKUL KISHORE Sound: ANITA KUSHWAHA Editors: JABEEN MERCHANT, SANKALP MESHRAM Actors: TUHINA VOHRA, SONALI VERMA, RACHEL LOPEZ

Who is Sandra? And if she’s from Bandra where is she? If you saw her would you know her? As you walk through Bandra past the rozedars buying food from Jeff’s, the college kids making the mochas last, the aunties haggling with the vegetable sellers, the biker boys on Bandstand, the commuters pouring out of the sunlit old station building you may well ask Where’s Sandra?

This short film looks for the answers in random encounters and intimate conversations – in Church, with a priest who leads us through the graveyard, in the words of poets and the songs of Hindi films, in the ladies compartment of the local train where a group of women sing Konkani songs, finally finding several Sandras in Bandra. Some hate their name, some love it but didn’t start out in Bandra and some turn out to be fraudulently claiming the title.


Including documentary interviews, Bollywood footage of Catholic girsl and a couple of songs of its own, the film wanders around Bandra and wonders about Sandra - is she stereotype or fantasy? Affectionate parody or vicious mockery? Still here, or just a figment from the past?

ABOUT COSMOPOLIS:TWO TALES OF A CITY

COSMOPOLIS: TWO TALES OF A CITY
(Documentary: 14.5 minutes)
PRODUCER :DEVI PICTURES
DIRECTOR:PAROMITA VOHRA



In two discrete but associated short tales, whose themes are inextricably linked, this film looks at divisions of class, language and food and queries the myths of Bombay as a great cosmopolitan city.

TALE 1: THE FORGOTTEN CITY (Imin.17 sec)
CAMERA: Mrinal Desai – SOUND: Paromita Vohra – EDITING: Jabeen Merchant

A poem called Mumbai, about a city built by workers. A skyline where mill chimneys are replaced by glinting, cylindrical highrises that mimic their shape, but do not hold their memory. A singer who recites the names of train stations, a map in song. In the eye of change, a forgotten city.

TALE 2: DEFEAT OF A MINOR GODDESS (13 min)
CAMERA: Setu SOUND: Gissy Michael, Hari M, Vipin Bhati, EDITING: Kavita Pai ACTORS: Renuka Shahane, Paromita Vohra

This is a film about food and faith. Anapurna, the goddess of food walks the earth and comes to a city by the sea where one of its inhabitants treats her to a gorgeous meal of fish. Pleased, she blesses the city with gastronomic abundance and even reigns as its (very popular) patron deity. However, very soon she faces competition with the arrival her sister, Laxmi, the goddess of wealth. The rivalry between the goddesses manages to divide the city with all the classical intrigue, insecurity and jealousy that make up a good old fashioned battle.

The city spirals into an escalating war over food and property, livelihood and living. Vegetarians don’t want to live with non-vegetarians, Saraswat Brahmins don’t want Jain neighbours and fishmongers don’t want people of other communities to sell fish. Interweaving the fictional war between the goddesses with a documentary exploration of Bombay’s food politics, the film interrogates the divisive politics that characterizes contemporary Mumbai, under its cosmopolitan costume.