Jan 29, 2013
Artist Development
The San Francisco Film Society has announced that acclaimed Indian filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia will be in San Francisco for the Film Society’s fifth Artist in Residence program, February 23-March 9. Ahluwalia’s schedule will include programs in each of the Film Society’s core areas–education, exhibition and filmmaker services–including visits to Bay Area high school and college classrooms, a screening of his feature film Miss Lovely (February 28), an artist talk at SFFS’s FilmHouse (March 5) and various networking events with the local film community. The Winter 2013 Artist in Residence program is made possible by a grant from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and is copresented by the Global Film Initiative.
“Ashim’s unique films and his singular perspective on the Indian film industry and culture make him an exciting addition to our flourishing Artist in Residence program,” said SFFS Director of Education Joanne Parsont. “We are looking forward to connecting him with the local filmmaking community and the opportunity to share his work and insights with students throughout the Bay Area. Our thanks go out to our copresenter the Global Film Initiative for putting us in contact with Ashim, one of their former grant recipients, and to our funder the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for making this cross-cultural event possible.”
For complete Artist in Residence information visit sffs.org/Education/Artist-in-Residence.
Ashim Ahluwalia was born in Mumbai, India and studied film at Bard College in New York. His documentary John & Jane premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005, screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and New Directors/New Films in New York, and won the international award at the European Media Art Festival, the Director’s Guild of America Jury Award, the Maysles Brothers Award and an Indian National Film Award. Ahluwalia’s films have screened at venues such as the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He was commissioned to work on a film and architecture installation for the 10th Venice Architecture Biennale, and his first narrative feature, Miss Lovely, had its world premiere at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Ahluwalia was named “one of the best emerging film directors working today” by Phaidon Press in Take 100: The Future of Film.
Miss Lovely (India 2012, 100 min.), Ahluwalia’s genre-bending examination of India’s underground filmmaking scene, will be screened Thursday, February 28 at 7:00 pm at New People Cinema (1746 Post Street). The screening will be followed by an in-depth Q&A with the filmmaker, moderated by Ivan Jaigirdar, executive director of 3rd i Films. Tickets are $5 for SFFS members, $11 general. Box office now open online at sffs.org.
Delving deep into the underbelly of India’s film industry, where back-alley producers churn out everything from pulpy horror movies to soft-core porn, Miss Lovely takes us back to Mumbai of the 1980s with lurid detail and intoxicating style. Working out of sleazy hotels and abandoned warehouses, brothers Sonu (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and Vicky (Anil George) are prolific producers of trashy, C-grade films for Mumbai’s booming underground market. The ambitious, domineering Vicky is the unquestioned brains of the operation, leading the dim-witted Sonu deeper into a world of alcoholic divas, sleazy money men and movie-loving gangsters. But this precarious partnership is put to the test when the brothers meet Pinky (Niharika Singh), an exquisite ingenue with a shady past . . . Ahluwalia mixes genres in highly self-aware strokes, bridging the gap between lower Bollywood and Indian art-house cinema, and, echoing Tarantino / Rodriguez’s Grindhouse project, laces Miss Lovely with artfully trashy clips of fake exploitation films, pitched partway between celebration and parody. The cinematic history at the heart of this film is a sordid and violent one, but this thoughtful filmmaker shows both the awful truths of exploitation cinema as well as its strange pleasures. – Cameron Bailey, Toronto Film Festival
Ahluwalia will also participate in an intimate artist talk in which he will discuss his filmmaking process and the state of the film industry in his native India Tuesday, March 5, 5:00 pm at FilmHouse (1426 Fillmore Street). This event is free and open to the public. For more information and to reserve a seat, visit sffs.org/Education/Artist-in-Residence.
Visiting artists are selected based on their filmmaking experience, compelling body of work and desire to share their knowledge with emerging filmmakers and film students. Under the auspices of the Film Society’s Education department, Ahluwalia is scheduled to visit several high school and college classes during his residency. In collaboration with Filmmaker360, the Film Society’s filmmaker services program, he will also have the opportunity to meet and network with Bay Area filmmakers.
Previous SFFS Artists in Residence have been Federico Veiroj of Uruguay, Ido Haar of Israel, Oday Rasheed of Iraq and Anna Boden of the U.S.
To request interviews or screeners contact bproctor@sffs.org.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.