Global Shorts: Love, Dreams, and Despair

Arranging Love
(Sheila Jayadev, 2006, Australia/India, English, 26 minutes)

Arranging Love explores the realities of the arranged marriage and the rules of love and relationships for second generation Indian-Australians. Following three second-generation Australians, Arranging Love attempts to look past the stereotypes of children struggling against their controlling Indian parents.
Thirty years since their parents migrated to Australia, those children are now starting families of their own. Their choices and their stories unveil the struggles and various attitudes the Indian community holds towards relationships, love and sexuality. With an arranged marriage, a cross cultural marriage and a love match among them, their stories uncover the truth of living in the middle ground between East and West in the 21st century.

The Miseducation of Pakistan
(Syed Ali Nasir, 2007, Pakistan, Urdu/Punjabi/English, 30 minutes, DVD)

A nation’s future hangs in the balance when it cannot educate its youth. Using a journalistic approach, this film explores the country’s appalling public education system. Schools with no teachers, schools overflowing with garbage, schools under the open sky, without drinking water or electricity; this is what most students of public schools in Pakistan can look forward to. Little wonder that a vast majority of primary school graduates can’t even be considered literate by international standards. All the while, a corrupt hierarchy of officials and school staff line their pockets with funds meant for educating the nation’s children and powerful feudals deny the children of their peasants the right to even a basic education, while sending their own offspring to the best schools in the country and abroad. And no one is held accountable. Using in-depth interviews and shocking footage, the filmmakers reveal a country where quality education is reserved only for a chosen few, while millions of children are denied the chance of a future.

The Morning Fog
(Aminta Goyel, 2006, India/USA, Hindi/English, 21 minutes, DVD)

For young Koko, it would be a sacred blessing to see the elusive tiger in the wild. As she nears adulthood in the glitzy and gluttonous metropolis of Bombay, Koko feels the call of the jungle in her heart. She runs off on a school safari trip, where she meets Raja, a weathered guide who promises to lead her to a tiger. As Koko nears her goal, she is betrayed and left to fend for herself in the mystic jungle.
And as the morning fog rolls in, dense with danger and primal dreams, a girl becomes a woman, a man becomes a beast, and an unforgettable tale unfolds…

Himalayan Dreams
(Ali Rasheed, 2006, Maldives, Maldivian / English, 29 minutes, MiniDV)

Young photographer Muha lives and works in Male, the island capital of the Maldives, and the most crowded city in the world. He dreams of adventuring in faraway places and, in 2005, backpacked through India to Nepal and Tibet, countries that couldn’t be more different to his home.
Himalayan Dreams follows Muha as he trains and treks from the world’s lowest elevation to the foot of its tallest mountains. For someone who has never seen mountains, mists, or snow, this is an extraordinary physical, psychological and spiritual journey. Muha experiences exhaustion and altitude sickness but also exhilaration and crystal clear mountain views.
Muha’s journey from the Indian Ocean to the Himalaya, beyond and back, will change his life forever.

Saturday, Oct. 7, 2007, 11 AM