Maximum India, Kennedy Center, Washington DC, March 2011

[NewLaura]

The Kennedy Center is having a festival to celebrate the arts of India in March.  There are some great things on the schedule!  Be sure to click on the tabs for music, literature, theater (Naseeruddin Shah is coming with his theater company) on the right-hand side!

This is the link to the page of films:
http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/festivals/10-11/india/events.cfm?genre=FLM

Click on the "read more" links for each film, because there is important information, like Kiran Rao doing a Q&A for Dhobi Ghat, Sharmila Tagore for Devi, Shabana Azmi for Mandi, and Nandita Das for Fire!!  

[Darshana]

THanks!! this looks terrific.  I am also interested in the documentary about Ismat CHugtai, and the amazing panel on women in Indian film.

[chinchinchu]

I was thinking of PMing Laura about this, but then thought she had probably put it up here already.

So far we've signed up for the Dhobi Ghat screening with Kiran Rao and the panel discussion on women in film that includes Sharmila Tagore and Shabana Azmi!!

Considering the orchestral performance with Shankar Mahadevan and Hariharan singing, as well as the food events....

[Darshana]

I really recommend/suggest you might like to research Ismat Chugtai a little and think of going to the thing about her, she was a fascinating writer, Muslim living in Bombay I think.  I think she did some film writing and a story of her, The Quilt, is on a theme of physical love between women -- anyhow I would love to hear about that, if I can't get there myself.  And about anything Bollywhatters go to of course.

[NewLaura]

Thanks for pointing that out, Darshana.  I hadn't made the connection between that documentary and the writer of the stories in Naseeruddin Shah's play.  One more thing to add to my hope-to-see list. 

chinchinchu, did you see that Sharmila is also going to be there for a Q&A after Devi?  And Shabana is introducing Mandi.

My friend and I have signed up for so many events that I don't know how we'll keep track of them.  And there are several free events that I really want to see.  I think we'll be living at the Kennedy Center in March.

[chinchinchu]

My friend and I have signed up for so many events that I don't know how we'll keep track of them. 

If you have some type of calendar program on your computer, click on the date/time part of the email confirmation you receive and it gives you option to add event to your calendar. Very handy and cool.

[NewLaura]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022505585.html

Top 5 must-sees at the Kennedy Center's Maximum India festival
By Emily Wax
Friday, February 25, 2011; 5:24 PM

The Kennedy Center's Maximum India festival, which opens Tuesday and runs through March 20, offers a broad sampling of Indian culture, entertainment, arts, crafts and cuisine. Emily Wax, The Washington Post's outgoing India bureau chief, looked over the festival's schedule and offered these recommendations. (For complete listings of events, visit kennedy-center.org/india.)

Music

The Manganiyar Seduction

Recently, my husband and I braved New Delhi's thick Saturday night traffic to take our seats on the grounds of the Purana Qila, a Mughal-era fort. We were there to listen to the Manganiyar Seduction, three dozen Muslim musicians, performing a blend of sultry Sufi and Hindu mystic songs in one continuous one-hour piece.

It turned out to be one of the most magical nights of my four years in India. The musicians are stacked in red boxes - four high, nine across - that light up to reveal the players as they perform. As more musicians join in and the music builds, so does the intensity of the light. March 19 and 20.

Dance

Madhavi Mudgal and Alarmel Valli in "Samanvaya: A Coming Together"

They are known as India's divas of dance. Their exquisitely bejeweled faces appear in oil paintings at performance halls across India. While Michael Jackson-style dancing has taken over much of Bollywood, two of India's foremost dancing queens are keeping classical dance relevant and exciting. March 2.

Literature panel

Imagining the City

More than ever, India's youths are abandoning the country's poorer rural areas for the promise of independence and social mobility in cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai. Few people know the innards of an Indian city as well as Suketu Mehta, author of "Maximum City." Mehta and other panelists will share the energizing story of India's urban dreams. March 13.

Film

"Does Gandhi Matter?"

The festival's film series highlights the artists and activists who shaped India's self-image. The documentary "Does Gandhi Matter?" promises to be a provocative exploration of attitudes among present-day Indian youths toward Mahatma Gandhi, India's founding father. Are Gandhi's messages against violence and materialism still relevant as a younger, more urbanized India surges ahead? March 16.

Kaleidoscope

Mapping India's Crafts

For my money, India has the best shopping in the world. Each region produces its own delicious fun. From the North's kitchy renderings of hand-painted Indian trucks to the South's elegant brass oil lamps, all of India's crafts are infused with their own history and meaning. Watch live demonstrations and pick up a funky chachka or a tribal tapestry with a story. Ongoing; ends March 20.

[NewLaura]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/24/AR2011022403611.html

Kennedy Center's India Festival puts on a Maximum display
By Lavanya Ramanathan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 24, 2011; 11:23 AM

The Kennedy Center might have dubbed next month's massive, three-week India celebration Incredible India or Wondrous India.

But would either begin to describe the blur of action, color, tastes and sounds of a nation with 1.17 billion people, 15 official languages and myriad beliefs, forms of dress and cuisine?

No, India might be incredible, but it is so much more, explains Alicia Adams, curator of the festival, which begins Tuesday. It's maximum. A place, she says, with "the maximum number of people, the maximum number of possibilities, the maximum heat you could ever tolerate."

"It is one country," adds Gilda Almeida, director of international programming, "but it is like 50 countries."

Adams, vice president of international programming, and Almeida would know. It took them eight pilgrimages to the nation's teeming cities and rural hilltop villages - each time crossing 7,800 miles to visit dancers' homes, festivals, artists' studios, restaurants - to uncover the India they would bring stateside.

You need only trek to the Kennedy Center to experience Maximum India, a festival that's a trip to the East at maximum speed. You'll be transported to a street market in bustling Mumbai, a silk shop in Chennai, an airy palace in Rajasthan - all with the Potomac River still in view.

Step inside and see an extended clan of superlative musicians whose performances are one-part performance art, one-part ancient tradition and, somehow, one-part "Hollywood Squares." And a gem exhibition that glitters with millions of dollars worth of diamonds, rubies and gold; a Parisian-reared dancer setting the dance world on fire with her knack for both the contemporary and old world; and marquee authors, hip DJs and famous actresses.

Or simply go to taste, as a high-profile Mumbai chef brings India's lesser-known cuisines to every restaurant in the Kennedy Center - a first for the arts center's annual cultural festivals.

With hundreds of events packed into a scant 21 days, you would need a tour guide to do it all. We've got the scoop on what to see, where to eat and what the festival's participants want you to know about their homeland - Maximum India.

Cuisine

"There's a life beyond tandoori chicken and lamb biryani," says Hemant Oberoi, the reserved executive chef of Mumbai's sumptuous Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, explaining his gastronomic mantra for the festival.

Oberoi, a career chef plucked last year to prepare a seven-course feast for the Obamas in Mumbai (he fondly recalls the conclusion - a sugarcane sorbet), will lead the festival's major culinary component, transforming the Kennedy Center's two eateries into full-fledged Indian restaurants.

Oberoi's first executive decision was to enlist 12 chefs from India's Taj Hotel restaurants - selected for their expertise in Parsi, Maharashtrian, Bengali, South Indian, Gujarati and other regional cuisines - to turn out an uncommonly eclectic Indian menu that includes such lesser-known delicacies as crispy, crepe-like dosas and fish wrapped in banana leaves, as well as such nouvelle offerings as chili-olive naan, saffron-laced lamb shanks and sugary gulab jamun creme brulee. ("The best chefs in India," Adams says, "are in the hotels, if not the homes.")

The Roof Terrace Restaurant will maintain its formal air as it serves high-end continental cuisine, while the casual KC Cafe will become an American version of a roadside "dhaba," serving crispy, calorie-laden street food and snacks. Each week, the chef will unveil a menu of 10 to 12 new dishes in the main restaurant.

In the days leading up to the festival, Oberoi has been anxious about re-creating his flavors more than 7,000 miles from home. Dry spices will arrive from India, and masala mixtures will be ground fresh here. Luckily, help in the form of two tandoori ovens, just the right flour for naan, and fresh ingredients will come from chef Vikram Sunderam, an old colleague of Oberoi's from the Taj, whom foodies might know as the chef of Penn Quarter hot spot Rasika. Oberoi, who was worried that local ingredients might affect the flavors of his cooking, is grateful for the assist. "These guys," he says, "are great help."

Music

Roysten Abel, the Indian-born director of "The Manganiyar Seduction," bristles a bit when someone refers to his masterwork as a "concert."

Though it features 43 musicians and a conductor, "Manganiyar" is very much the eye-popping spectacle: Every musician - the dhol drummers, the singers, the men playing the accordion-like harmonium - performs in a lighted, red-walled cubical, part of a structure that is 36 feet wide and 21 feet high. When a note rings out, the lights on that musician's box come to life, creating an effect that at once recalls "Hollywood Squares" and the street-peddling of Amsterdam's red-light district (hence the name, "Seduction").
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"This is the most theatrical performance I've ever directed," says Abel, a Shakespearean actor who created the show in 2006 and has since taken it around the world, including to New York's Lincoln Center last year. "People can't place it: It's a contemporary performance with traditional musicians."

Special effects aside, the music is reason enough to check out the performances at the Kennedy Center. Manganiars, a Sufi clan of performers whose talents reach back generations, are among the most revered folk musicians. "They are the most soulful singers," Abel says. "The whole community sings like that. It's not about showing off how good they are - it's about being the music."

Also featured at Maximum India is another artist who blurs the boundaries of traditional Indian music: British-born rapper Panjabi MC, who rose to fame after teaming up with Jay-Z for a remix of "Beware of the Boys," an old bhangra folk song. By pairing hip-hop beats with bhangra, Panjabi MC has attracted an international following. His show in the Kennedy Center's "Monsoon Club" (a transformed KC Jazz Club) is sold out, but a free performance on the Millennium Stage should make your must-see list.

Speaking of the Monsoon Club, it's definitely worth a visit. The Kennedy Center commissioned a major art installation to give the club just the right vibe for acts who fuse West and East, including Indian blues band Soulmate.

Exhibits

Move over, Hope Diamond. Forty incredible examples of India's insatiable lust for gems - cuffs covered in countless polished rubies, a bird-shaped flask blanketed in diamonds, a diamond wedding necklace that hangs from head to knees - are headed to Washington.

"Jewelry played an important part in Indian lifestyle," says Munnu Kasliwal, whose family for three generations has run Jaipur's Gem Palace, which will curate the "Treasures of the Gem Palace" exhibit and a pop-up shop for Maximum India. "People liked to buy it and keep it as a security. Jewelry is something that is passed on from one generation to the next. It lives beyond us."
Today, a lux set of dangly ruby earrings is hardly the Indian equivalent of a savings bond. They are meant to be worn (the more pieces at one time, it seems, the better), and it's well understood that the perfect bauble is like a spotlight, ensuring that the beauty of its wearer is on display.

Although the pieces in the exhibit are not vintage, Kasliwal favors age-old rose-cut diamonds and old-world traditions, so if you're not blinded by all the glitter, take a moment to check out the craftsmanship.

To represent India's visual arts and crafts traditions, the Kennedy Center enlisted artists to create works solely for the festival: Artist Jitish Kallat will fill the Hall of Nations with a sculpture spelling out one of Mahatma Gandhi's most famous speeches - each letter crafted from delicate, bone-shaped porcelain. In the North Atrium Foyer, Reena Saini Kallat will create the illusion of India's many historic ruins in the form of a vast fallen column made out of 23,000 rubber stamps. Giant moving peacock figures will delight kids and adults alike, while young ones can visit the "Hi! I Am India" playroom to collect stickers, read comic books and learn what it's like to grow up in India.

For "Kaleidoscope: Mapping India's Crafts," the center commissioned a caravan of street bikes - 28 in all - representing every state in the nation, plus a couple of extras. The bikes will be stacked high with crafts from Delhi's Crafts Museum. The Hall of States will be filled with 25 six-yard saris, and in Bharthi Kher's colorful exhibit "I've Got Eyes at the Back of My Head," discs reminiscent of Indian women's ornamental bindis will be hung in the Grand Foyer.

Dance and theater

During the next month, dozens of dancers are preparing to descend on the Kennedy Center, tradition bearers who, Adams says, "represent the top echelon" of the Indian dance world.
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Some have spent most of their lives immersed in southern India's ancient bharatanatyam or kuchipudi dance forms, others in northern India's kathak. Even masters of Bollywood's sexed-up shimmying - with eight counts as likely to come from the latest Usher videos as from rural folk dances - will make their way to a Kennedy Center stage.

For the uninitiated, it will be enough to witness gorgeous young things dripping with bling and wrapped in a rainbow of gold-flecked fabrics, their feet slapping the floor with rhythmic precision. Watch closely, however, and you'll find there's a literalism - and athleticism - in their movements that makes Indian dance surprisingly easy to grasp and easier still to adore.

"It can be very athletic; it can be very vibrant. It has leaps; there's a half-seated position like a demi-plie," says Ranee Ramaswamy, co-artistic director of Minneapolis-based bharatanatyam troupe Ragamala Dance, one of the few festival acts based in the United States. But, she says, the real artistry is the dancers' command of their bodies, their grace. "There's an amazing amount of control. It's controlled energy," Ramaswamy says. People are impressed by "very, very high jumps," she adds, but with "a very refined dancer, you can see the music when they dance."

So whom should you see? Madhavi Mudgal and Alarmel Valli will blend both bharatanatyam and long-lost temple dance form Odissi; Shantala Shivalingappa, a much-watched young Parisian dancer and choreographer, will tackle kuchipudi, a dance form once practiced exclusively by men (ever one to defy conventions, Shivalingappa is often seen these days in contemporary dance productions, such as those of German choreographer Pina Bausch). And representing the new wave of companies borne in the West and fusing classical technique with an experimental spirit is Ragamala, which will share a bill with local troupe Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh.

Want to experience India's hip side? You don't actually need a ticket for "Ticket to Bollywood," a touring spectacle spotlighting the Indian movie industry's inexplicable affection for dazzling song-and-dance numbers. Find the family-friendly show free on the Millennium Stage.

Despite a longtime interest in dance, Adams says her first selection for Maximum India was in fact a theater performance: Chorus Repertory Theatre's modernist rendition of Henrik Ibsen's "When We Dead Awaken," which Adams now refers to as her "ah ha moment." The show, which Adams saw at a festival in Delhi, comes from rural Manipur, a state in a northeastern India nestled next to Burma, and yet it is as avant-garde as anything you'd see out of Europe or Asia. It's performed in Manipuri with English surtitles.

"The moment I saw this piece I said, 'I want this to be in the festival,'" Adams says. "It's extraordinary. It's Indian, yet it's also very Western."

For families, Delhi's Ishara Puppet Theatre is bringing "Simple Dreams," a family-friendly nod to children's vast imaginations; the shows feature performers who use umbrellas, sticks and puppets in extraordinary ways.

It's all enough to make your head spin. To coordinate Maximum India - from filling every stage, to tracking the production of every art piece in India, to booking hundreds of flights and procuring nearly as many visas - was a monumental feat.

"To make this happen," says programming director Almeida, "it is madness. You have to be really good with the details. We are transforming all the spaces at the same time.

"That," she says, "is the magic."

ramanathanl@washpost.com

[chinchinchu]

Great article, except for this rather puzzling passage:

"Want to experience India's hip side? You don't actually need a ticket for "Ticket to Bollywood," a touring spectacle spotlighting the Indian movie industry's inexplicable affection for dazzling song-and-dance numbers. Find the family-friendly show free on the Millennium Stage."

I just don't get what is "inexplicable" about an affection for dazzling song-and-dance numbers --- you mean there are people who don't love those??

Also, at this point I don't think I would classify dosas as something that is lesser known here.

Anyway, thanks for posting the informative and enticing article -- I wasn't aware of the gem exhibit (my son would love that) and the street food ("wow" doesn't begin to describe my excitement over that one). We're going to 6 events in this program (Dhobi Ghat, panel discussion, 2 food events, musicians in boxes and Shabana's play).

[Darshana]

And I wish the writer had given some info about the movies, too!

[chinchinchu]

And I wish the writer had given some info about the movies, too!

Doh! Not sure why I didn't notice that glaring omission, being that this is, um, a film forum....

[Brindavani]

Wow, I hope the  DC bollywhat members take time to listen to my friend, Raghu Dixit, sing this Friday at 6:00 pm on the Millenium stage.  He is fantastic.  All the artistes are spectacular.  This looks like a great festival. 

[NewLaura]

And I wish the writer had given some info about the movies, too!

I scoured the paper and even searched online, but the Washington Post doesn't seem to have had anything yet about any of the films!      Maybe they'll have something next weekend, because I think the first film isn't until March 14.

Great article, except for this rather puzzling passage:

"Want to experience India's hip side? You don't actually need a ticket for "Ticket to Bollywood," a touring spectacle spotlighting the Indian movie industry's inexplicable affection for dazzling song-and-dance numbers. Find the family-friendly show free on the Millennium Stage."

I just don't get what is "inexplicable" about an affection for dazzling song-and-dance numbers --- you mean there are people who don't love those??

I noticed that, too.  In an article about a Blues singer coming to the festival, it said "To many, Soulmate is an antidote to those ridiculously happy Bollywood hit movies."    
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022505567.html

Wow, I hope the  DC bollywhat members take time to listen to my friend, Raghu Dixit, sing this Friday at 6:00 pm on the Millenium stage.  He is fantastic.  All the artistes are spectacular.  This looks like a great festival. 

I just realized that they are broadcasting the daily free evening concerts live on the internet here:

http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/live/

So maybe you could watch Raghu Dixit's concert on the internet!  It is at 6 pm EST.  You can see the whole list of concerts at that link.

[NewLaura]

Wow, I was just going through the list of free 6 pm concerts, and apparently they're showing the documentary films live!  That includes the Ismat & Annie film you recommended, Darshana.


Documentaries: The Story of Gitanjali and Pather Panchali: A Living Resonance
The Story of Gitanjali takes a look at the collection of poems by the renowned Indian polymath Rabindranath Tagore, which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, making him the first Asian Nobel laureate. Pather Panchali: A Living Resonance explores legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s film Pather Panchali. Fifty years after its release, Pather Panchali is still regarded as one of the greatest films ever made and one that solidified India’s spot on the international film map. Documentaries produced by the Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Part of maximum INDIA.
Live broadcast on 3/15/11 at 6:00 PM


Documentaries: Does Gandhi Matter? and Ismat & Annie
Does Gandhi Matter? explores the continuing interest, especially among today’s youth, in the Mahatma and his message of tolerance and non-violence. Through interviews with a wide cross-section of people, the film depicts reactions to its titular question. Ismat & Annie follows the lives and works of Ismat Chugtai and Qurrat-ul-Ain Haider (better known as Annie)—two writers who, in spite of turmoil and turbulence in their personal lives and the period in which they lived, contributed immeasurably to the Indian literary landscape. Documentaries produced by the Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Part of maximum INDIA.
Live broadcast on 3/16/11 at 6:00 PM


There are also several dance performances, including the Bollywood one:

Ticket to Bollywood
Feel the thrill of India’s Bollywood with the country’s sensational song and dance movie genre performed live on stage. Artistic Director Shubhra Bhardwaj’s Ticket to Bollywood aims to present an all-encompassing Bollywood experience, featuring music from across the genre, including several of Bollywood’s best-loved hits. This maximum INDIA performance is presented under the auspices of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi.
Live broadcast on 3/17/11 at 6:00 PM

[NewLaura]

I was just listening to the Rhythm of Rajasthan concert from last night, and it is great.

But check out what the dancer does at about minute 68 in the video:  she picks up two rings off the floor with her eyelids!   

http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/videos/?id=M4505&type=A

[Brindavani]

Thank you for the link to the videos!!  It is excellent quality and they say they are going to have all the performances on the Millenium stage over there.  Fantastic. 

[Darshana]

So - did anybody go to anything?  how was it, who was there?  and if anybody saw the Ismat CHugtai thing I'd especially like to hear about that - for one thing, would you say it was good enough that I should pester the film festival people in NY to bring it here?

[NewLaura]

I went to about a half dozen events.  I didn't get to watch the Ismat Chugtai documentary.  I thought I would be able to watch it on the archives portion of the Kennedy Center website (because all of the other Millennium Stage events were available there).  I was so disappointed that it wasn't included!  If I had known, I would have made more of an effort to watch it live on the internet when it was streaming.

Nandita Das seemed to have been the person in charge of the film portion of the program.  She suggested the focus/topic:  portrayal of Indian women in film.  She also selected the five films:  Four Women (2007), Mandi (1983), Devi (1960), Fire (1996), and Mirch Masala (1985).  There were post-film discussions for each film with either Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Nandita Das, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore, Dilip Basu, or Ketan Mehta.

Nandita also was the moderator for a panel discussion on the portrayal of Indian women in film.  The panel included Shabana Azmi, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Ketan Mehta, and Dilip Basu.  Nandita did an excellent job as the moderator, including tactfully trying to rein in Dilip Basu when he went off on tangential topics.  Shabana, Adoor and Ketan were all very interesting.  Adoor was very soft-spoken, until someone mentioned Slumdog Millionaire.  He sat up and very clearly and very loudly said that it was a bad movie.  The woman persisted, trying to ask a question about it, and he said very clearly, loudly, and definitively “There is no need to talk about it, because it is a bad movie.”  Nandita looked astonished/embarrassed, but she laughed.  Shabana spoke very eloquently, I thought, about how both mainstream and independent films had value.  (In general at the festival, there was a bit of a tendency to belittle mainstream films.)  She said she had fun filming outlandish scenes, too, and described filming a scene where she was hanging over crocodiles in a well.

My friend and I were amused that Shabana Azmi picked up her purse at 9 pm and said to Nandita that she had to leave.  Nandita took a few more questions.  A woman asked why Indian men were so unromantic when lyrics to Indian songs were so beautiful and romantic.  Shabana Azmi stood up and said “Listen, my husband is the greatest lyricist in India, and in 25 years of marriage, he has not said ONE romantic thing to me!”  The audience roared with laughter.  And with that, she basically walked off the stage and that was the end of the panel.    It was a very "grande dame of Indian cinema" moment.

Nandita gave a talk on “Bollywood and Beyond.”  I was really impressed by her.  She seemed very genuine and very intelligent.  (And she’s even more beautiful in person!)  She spoke extemporaneously for over an hour. The talk was geared toward Americans who didn’t know anything at all about Indian film.  She explained the difference between commercial and independent and regional films.

She has acted in ten languages.  She says it is so hard learning lines for South Indian language and every time she does one of the films, she swears that she will never do it again.  But as time passes, she forgets how hard it is, and then she gets offered an interesting film and agrees to do it.

She talked about how smaller and regional films cannot compete with marketing budgets of big commercial films.  She told an anecdote of a conversation she had with Karan Johar.  She asked him what the marketing budget was for his film (I think it was MNIK).  He told her, and she said the figure was 10 times the production budget of her film (Firaaq).

She said that a director had once asked her to lighten her skin with makeup.  She refused, and he said “But you’re playing a middle class woman!”  She replied “I am a middle class woman, and this is what my skin looks like!”  I really loved her for that.

Someone asked a question about Slumdog, and she said, very diplomatically, that she did not really like it very much.  She said that she watched it at the Telluride film festival with Salman Rushdie, and that he had turned to her and said that it was not his India in the film, and she agreed.  She said that she had been very flattered to see Danny Boyle waiting in line at 9 am to watch her film (Firaaq) at the festival, and she was clearly trying very hard to be diplomatic about what she said.

She had her baby and (I’m assuming) husband there with her.  I don’t remember her exact words, but she basically said she obsesses about her baby and nobody better try to come between her and her baby.  She said “he’s asleep back there, and if he wakes up and needs me, I will go to him, and maybe you all can talk amongst yourselves about this topic.”  

A little while into the question and answer period, he did cry, and her expression and body language were mommy panic.  Her husband jumped up and rushed out of the room with the baby, but she was obviously still tense about it.  After a few questions, she asked one of the Kennedy Center staff to please go check on the baby and make sure he was okay.  It ended not too much later, and she went straight out there, and was standing by the entrance holding the baby when we came out.  

I think Nandita put a lot of time and effort into this festival.  She was there all week.  I was really, really impressed by her.  She put together a list of recommended films, and I thought it was interesting to see what she included:

Mainstream
Mughal-e-Azam (1960)
Mera Naam Joker (1970)
Deewar (1975)
Sholay (1975)
Umrao Jaan (1981)
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)
Dil Chahta Hai (2001)
Lage Raho Munnabhai (2006)
Chak De India (2007)
3 Idiots (2009)

Independent
Pyaasa (1957)
Bandini (1963)
Charulata (1964)
Subarnarekha (1965)
Manthan (1980)
Elippathayam (1981)
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983)
Khandhar (1984)
Piravi (1989)
Satya (1998)
Maqbool (2003)
Firaaq (2009)

ETA:  All of the panels/discussions I attended were recorded, so I'm hoping that they show up somewhere at some point...

[ribbonbox]

Hi NewLaura,

I haven't been able to get on BW much so I'm just now reading this thread, but it's still so interesting to read your first-hand account of Nandita Das. I live in the area, and I shamefully didn't make it to any of the Maximum India events. I saw that most of the pay events were sold out and heard that free events were packed, which was great to hear. Thanks for taking the time to write it up your experience!