Vancouver International South Asian Film Festival will return to Surrey from Nov. 22 to 25.
The eighth annual event will feature 40 screenings, with a theme of “Bollywood and Beyond.”
An opening-night gala is planned for Surrey City Hall on Thursday, Nov. 22. The night will include a screening of Mehsampur, Kabir Singh Choudhry’s “meta-fiction” film based on the life of Amar Singh Chamkila; the movie recently won the Grand Jury Prize for India Gold at MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.
Mehsampur, done in a mockumentary style, starts by following a young filmmaker who sets out to make a documentary about deceased Punjabi folk-singer Chamkila, known as the “Elvis of Punjab.” What proceeds is a stylistic exploration of the death of Chamkila and also the filmmaking process, “creating a sort of meta-movie or a film-within-a-film.”
Venues for other screenings include Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus and also Vancouver Film School. Film details and screening times can be found online at visaff.ca.
The festival, launched in 2008, is designed as a collaboration among “directors, actors, producers, community organizations, corporate brands and South Asian cinephiles,” according to a media advisory.
“The festival is dedicated to bridging the gap between South Asian talent and mainstream audiences, and showcases films from all over the world,” including five Canadian films this year, plus titles from the U.S., India, England, Pakistan and one from Iran.
Festival media liaison Raj Thandhi, of Pink Chai Media, said two particular events might be of interest to Surrey readers – “our Youth filmmaker event (on Nov. 23) and our special feature screening of Half Widow, which was filmed in Kashmir, and the director will be in attendance at his screening for Q&A,” on Nov. 24.
Beyond the films, VISAFF includes “a whole host of workshops ranging in topics from acting, production, and casting, with a special ‘Practice Your Pitch’ session from Crazy8,” plus a business-to-business networking event hosted with the support of Surrey Board of Trade and the British Columbia Indian Business Network (BC-IBN), “to help community engagement and building amongst industry players in post-production, digital entertainment, and interactive arts.”
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