Found at a preview screening of the three-hour Indian film epic "Kuch
Kuch Hota Hai" (to be shown at the upcoming SF Asian American Film
Festival), notes about the "Cinema of the Indian Diaspora" -

"What a year 2002 was for Indian cinema. LAGAAN was nominated for an
Oscar, MONSOON WEDDING took the box office by storm, an DEVDAS became
the first Bollywood film to screen at Cannes. *Add the momentum of Baz
Luhrmann's Bollywood-inspired musical MOULIN ROUGE*, plus A.R. Rahman's
stage production of BOMBAY DREAMS, and one senses that the Bollywood
aesthetic of song, dance, and extravagance is on the brink of becoming
mainstream."

As it happens, I saw - and liked - every one of those films and even
"Bombay Dreams" on stage in London, but "Moulin Rouge" and Luhrmann's
"Boheme" made me gag.

As to the real Indians, "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" is colorful, weird,
fascinating, mind-numbing, super-romantic, frustrating, ridiculous and
likeable in turn, a musically-illustrated story of a young friendship
turning into love... in 10 years (during which the principals don't age
a day) and three hours. The festival's focus on India ranges from the
revival of Mehboob Khan's 1957 classic, "Mother India," generally regarded
as the cornerstone of Indian commercial cinema; to the festival-opening
"Bend It Like Beckham," Gurender Chadha's fine, but sitcom-lite movie
about a young Indian woman in London, dreaming of playing professional
soccer; to the 2001 Canadian "Bollywood Bound," Nisha Pahuja's story of
the reverse migration of a young Indian leaving his Vancouver home to
find fame and fortune in Bombay's movie industry. Mercifully, the festival
has nothing to do with the new, thoroughly wretched "Guru," which combines
the worst of East and West.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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