7inch no.31: I For India

Movie-making as letter-writing

I For India
(Dir: Sandhya Suri, UK 2005, 70 mins)

In 1965 Yash Pal Suri and his wife Sheel left behind their families in India to start a new life in Darlington. Frustrated with letter-writing, he kept in touch with his relatives by exchanging super 8 home-movies and tape recordings, and in the process kept a record of the tensions and regrets that migration can create. His daughter Sandhya Suri, a graduate from the National Film and Television School, has woven this material along with archive news footage from the time into a beautiful, bittersweet film about home and belonging. (There's more background in this interview.)

To accompany the film we'll have some appropriately misty-eyed shorts, and a selection of reconfigured archive footage of the Midlands Arts Centre recently premiered at the mac itself.

This event is supported by Vivid.