Bollywood Night
Sister Midnight [yes, again]
Tuesday, January 13
Doors at 8pm; movie starts at 8:30pm
Free
Prologue:
One of the fun things about doing events here again after a long pause is that some unexpected technical difficulties have arisen at times and, well, we’ve just had to roll with it. So, yes, keen observers may notice: this event already happened, in December. But did it happen? Well, the answer depends upon your perspective. Because we did definitely announce the event (on our website and Instagram) and people definitely did show up — something happened — but we were not ultimately able to show the intended film. Sadly, we had to sub in an alternate. If our original intention was something “Bollywood-adjacent” (see below), the night ended up with but a faint whiff of Bollywood (we had samosas!). But we have now ironed out the difficulties (and will make sure to have a more concrete backup plan in place as well), so (barring natural disaster or global thermonuclear war or some other unforeseen calamity) this second try here will be successful. We will screen the intended movie at Betalevel on Tuesday, 1/13! We have the technology.
And now on to the actual event description [same as before, except this time actually happening]…
Event description:
To get it out of the way first (er, now second, we suppose): we must admit that the film we have selected for the little reprise here of our Bollywood Night series, Sister Midnight (2024, 110 minutes), is NOT a Bollywood film at all. It is set and was filmed in India; it stars Indian actors who typically work within the Bollywood system. But it is in fact a British independent film, written and directed by a British-Indian director. It got its premiere at Cannes, after all.
Yet we, frankly, just wanted to watch it ourselves. And so we are allowing the definitions to stretch a little: not Bollywood, but Bollywood-adjacent, surely. Plus, it can perhaps provide a different view on contemporary Indian life and culture than the typical song-and-dance fare. Not better, not “more realistic” (it is by all accounts fairly surreal, if anything), but different.
And what is that view? Of a woman, Uma (Radhika Apte), who finds herself in an unwanted arranged marriage and, in trying (or perhaps not trying) to squeeze herself into that ill-fitting domestic role, slowly (or perhaps not so slowly) unravels. Unable and unwilling to play her part, she becomes ever more chaotic, feral, wild.
We know how she feels.
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View the trailer here.