3rd i Films and the Asian American and Asian Diaspora studies Presents: I for India. Preceded by conversations on South Asian diaspora Films with Professor Irum Shiekh and Ivan Jaigirdar (3rd i).
In this award winning feature-length gem of a documentary, filmmaker Sandhya Suri reveals a deeply personal archive of immigration, identity and belonging through the eyes of one South Asian family and their two movie cameras.
In 1965, Yash Pal Suri left India to pursue his medical career in England with the aim of one day returning to practice in his homeland. Spurred by inadequate long distance telephone service, he purchased two Super-8 film cameras, two projectors and two reel-to-reel recorders and sent one set to his parents back home. Over the next forty years Yash shared the idiosyncrasies of his life abroad with his parents while they shared the comforting mundanity of home — each holding firmly to the dream of their imminent reunion.
“★★★★ A miraculous mini-epic… terrifically warm, watchable film-making.” The Guardian
“A movie that’s both deeply personal and surprisingly universal.” Jeanette Catsoulis, The New York Times
“Critic’s Pick! Sandhya Suri’s lyrical look at the life of her British-Indian expatriate family over the years — much of it through home-movie footage — could have easily been an artless and self-indulgent wallow, but in the director’s remarkably sure hands, it becomes a work of art.” New York Magazine