even more film festivities

Forgot to mention it's also time for SAIFF (this time meaning not Palestinian and Persian films in Seattle, but rather South Asian International Film here in NYC). Lots of tasty-lookin' movies, most of which I can't go to, dammit. Tanuja Chandra's post-9/11 political romance Hope and a Little Sugar looks intriguing (hope for a wider release soon) and Sanjeev Chatterjee & Amitava Kumar's new short doc Dirty Laundry explores "questions of race, nationality, home, belonging and justice through the lens of an Indian visiting South Africa and meeting those people of Indian origin who have accepted their South Africanness in a full embrace." I'm quite keen to see it; in Oxford I knew a number of Southern Africans (from SA, Zim, Bostwana etc) of South Asian ancestry. Their communities, which have traced fascinating trajectories over the last century, in some ways foreshadowed the postmodern political linkages of the G-3.

(it was a girl named Divya, in fact, who first taught me--and several others--to sing Tswana hymns, a happening without which I would never be able to tell my future grandchildren a story involving a departed friend, Nelson Mandela, the Warden of Rhodes House, two very ugly tapestries, and a red skirt. Ke tla roma mang?)