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South Asian Diaspora

Acting Our Age
Gurinder Chadha
1992, 30 min., Color, UK
This humorous and thought-provoking film documents the residents of a South Asian home for the elderly in Britain. Director Gurinder Chadha assists the residents in directing their own video. The resu...

B.E.S. (Bangla East Side)
Sarita Khurana & Fariba Alam
2004, 45 min., Color, US
B.E.S. (Bangla East Side) is a documentary portrait of four Bangladeshi teenagers growing up in the Lower East Side of New York City. Initially started as an after-school workshop at a local high sch...

Claiming Our Voice
Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel
Producer: Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel & Chitra Aiyar
2013, 21 min., US
CLAIMING OUR VOICE follows members of Andolan, a Queens-based organization founded and led by South Asian domestic workers as a means to support each other and collectively organize against exploitati...

Corner Store Blues
Kaizad Gustad
1994, 48 min., Color
Although he feels trapped working in his uncle's corner store in Little India, Rahul dreams of someday making it as a blues musician. A real black blues musician. Now if only he can overcome his Bomba...

Dal Puri Diaspora
Richard Fung
2012, 80 min., Color, Canada
The recipe for dal puri traveled with indentured workers from India’s Gangetic plain to southern Caribbean colonies of Britain and the Netherlands in the 19th Century. In the 1960s the wrapped roti mi...

Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity
Kevin Lee
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2005, 12 min., Color, US
A restaurant owner beaten. A policeman fired. A 20 year subway conductor born in the U.S., threatened with job loss: All for wearing the signature turbans of their religion, Sikhism. Since 9/11, h...

Desi Remix Chicago Style
Balvinder Dhenjan
1996, 46 min., Color, US/UK
Shot in Chicago and London this energetic documentary follows three very different Punjabi bands and their attempts to use their music as a bridge between the competing cultural influences of India an...

Leaving Bakul Bagan
Sandeep Ray
1994, 45 min., Color
This moving documentary follows the filmmaker's cousin's imminent departure from India to pursue studies in the U.S. Torn between familial and national loyalties and her desire to travel and experienc...

Ma/baap
Siraj Jhaveri
1994, 30 min., Color
When your parents hate each other -- how do you learn to love? This award-winning, personal chronicle's the relationship between the filmmaker's Muslim father and Hindu mother --exploring their forbid...

Maid to Stay
Aparna Talaulicar
1999, 30 min., Color, US
"Maid to Stay" is the story of four South Asian Women domestic workers in New York. Elizabeth has been sent back to India because her employers discover she's been talking to a women's group about ho...

Mr. Ahmed
Terrance Grace
1994, 52 min., Color
Internationally renowned actor Naseeruddin Shah stars in this poignant drama of an Indian ex-patriate living in a small American town. The film paints a portrait of a man struggling to re-invent himse...

A Nice Arrangement
Gurinder Chadha
1990, 11 min., Color, UK
Set in the London home of an Indian family on the morning of their daughter's wedding, this film is a wry depiction of one of the most central of Indian traditions -- the arranged marriage. As the you...

Taxi-vala/auto-biography
Vivek Renjen Bald
1996, 45 min., Color, US
This documentary focuses on the lives and dreams of South Asian immigrant taxi drivers in New York City. Combining video and taxi-driver interviews and the personal narrative of the second-generation...

Turmeric Border-Marks
Christina Choe
2000, 25 min., Color
TURMERIC BORDER-MARKS is an experimental documentary set in modern Seoul, Korea, where an intersection becomes two stories of migration, globalization, hybrid identity, cracked mirrors and turmeric (a...

We, Too, Sing America: Racist Backlash in the Aftermath of September 11
Yun Jong Suh
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 12 min., Color, US
This short is a poignant and revealing document of the thoughts, hopes and fears of Muslim, Arab-American and South Asian children in the milieu of a country calling for war and unconditional complian...

What Are Our Women Like in America?
Balvinder Dhenjan
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1994, 12 min., Color, US
An insightful and hilarious account of one immigrant Indian man's attempt to come to grips with American pop culture and "Westernized" Indian women. A TWN Workshop Production....

What Do You Call An Indian Woman Who's Funny?
Gurinder Chadha
1994, 19 min., BW, UK
What do you call an Indian woman who's funny in 20th Century Britain? A British performer? A Black comedienne? An enigma? This humorous and comedic documentary, brings the laughs and dreams of four In...


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