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Beyond Bollywood Film Festival

This blog post was written by Sunny Huang, an intern for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Learn more about our internship program here.

One evening in the late 1990s, a college student named Kalpen Modi and his friends sat around a dorm room discussing screen names. They thought up name after name. Many suggestions, like “Kal Pacino,” never saw the light of day. Someone remarked, “What if you just split up your first name?” and Kal Penn was born.

When the Indian American actor played Gogol in The Namesake, he noticed both he and his character had two names—one given and one chosen. Penn suggested to director Mira Nair that they place both of his character’s names next to both of his names—subtly recognizing how our multiple names represent us.

Penn was one of several speakers at APAC’s Beyond Bollywood Film Festival on November 15, 2014 who brought up the interchange between name and representation. Director Mahesh Pailoor said of his film Brahmin Bulls, “The title Brahmin Bulls—some people come out and say, ‘Okay, it’s an Indian movie. Other people watch and say, ‘It’s an American movie.’”

At first glance, explained Brahmin Bulls producer Anu Pradhan, “‘Brahmin’ refers to the characters’ Indian heritage and ‘bulls’ refers to their nature of locking horns.” Upon closer inspection, a Brahman is a breed of cattle bred in America from cattle imported from India.

Implicit within the issue of names is the larger struggle for nuanced representations of Indian Americans, which is one of the reasons behind the film festival itself. “We wanted to encourage further dialogue and cultural exchange by introducing new, diverse audiences to our story in America,” curator Masum Momaya explains, “so we embarked on a year long effort to bring the first ever Beyond Bollywood Film Festival to D.C.” 

In February 2014, APAC opened Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation, a groundbreaking exhibition featuring Indian American stories. Expansive in its breadth, the exhibition covers Indian American history from 1790 through today. The film festival was an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the day-to-day lives of Indian Americans.

From 1PM to 10PM, the films ranged from short independent documentaries to full-length blockbusters—Meet the Patels, Daadi, Brahmin Bulls, Basketball, Meri Jaan, and The Namesake. Films were interspersed with conversations with filmmakers and actors—director David Stoler and actress Purva Bedi (Daadi); Pailoor, Pradhan, and actor Sendhil Ramamurthy (Brahmin Bulls); and Penn. More than 500 people attended the festival; some stayed the whole day. If the audience at the film festival is any indication, the desire for more nuanced and authentic representation is there. “The Indian American community is becoming more prominent, so it’s time for all our stories to be heard,” said one attendee.

It’s time, moreover, to recognize that Asian Pacific American experiences are reflective of the American spirit. As the Center’s director, Konrad Ng, put it, “These experiences form a collective way for understanding ourselves and living our lives.”

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