Bollywood Chaat

10-25 September, 2005

The Design Exchange

Opening gala: Saturday, 10 September, 8-11pm

Tickets $10 (contact SAVAC to purchase)

For Tamasha! SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Collective) presents Bollywood Chaat, a looped thirty-minute program of international film & video shorts inspired by Bollywood. The works highlight aspects of Bollywood - the posters - the fame - the song and dance - the fantasy - and much more to show us how Bollywood has seeped into our contemporary psyches.

Dus Ka Bees by Babu Eshwar Prasad captures the spirit of Bollywood masala by creating a rhythmic parade of still images from popular cinema posters with musical effects and a finale!

In Shelly Bahl's video, Pas de Deux (Dance for Two), two women meet in a park and begin to dance, which is reminiscent of a Bollywood musical number. The mood is romantic and playful, but things begin to go wrong as they stumble, trip and collide.

Burke and Dream by Farheen HaQ gently critiques stereotypical gender constructs and escapist fantasy in Bollywood film while still paying homage to Bollywood heroines.

Bani Abidi's …so he started singing is an emphatic retelling of a zany Bollywood plot by a passionate aficionado.

Fack by Divya Mehra appropriates cinematic footage and writes her own English subtitles to complicate the nature of translation - it's not just about language but culture as well.

Faisal Anwar uses digital special effects in Gurriya to create a dreamlike world of memories and Bollywood images to ponder how these impressions will be imprinted on his baby daughter's world.

Rahul Bose, "the new face of Indian Cinema" plays rugby and comments on war in Scrum in the Mud by Simone Ahuja. Regardless of Bose's silver screen status his teammates treat him as just one of the guys - but do we?

Deviya Mehra intensifies a banal moment using melodramatic Bollywood audio in Not in Here.

Whereas Andil Gosine's Someone Like You (Chutney Edit) brings to life a dramatic Bollywood moment through song, dance and fantasy.