UK 'Bite the Mango' festival highlights South Asian challenges

LONDON - An Asian film festival in Britain kicks off on Friday with a controversial Indian movie that has been blocked by the courts back home and features a Pakistani star who provoked fury for steamy on-screen scenes.

The 11th annual Bite the Mango film festival in the northern English city of Bradford is out to highlight the problems faced by filmmakers and actors in South Asia's prolific cinema industry, which is seen as conservative and politicized.

The opening movie will be "Black Friday," directed by 33-year-old Anurag Kashyap, which centers around the 1993 bomb attacks across Mumbai that killed more than 250 people.

An Indian court has blocked its theater release while a legal case is ongoing, but Kashyap believes there is a wider problem of general unease about hard-hitting, factual films dealing with controversial subjects.

"They are saying that the film should not prejudice the accused before the court rules," Kashyap told Reuters after arriving in England.

"My contention is that the film not judging anybody. It's based on a book which has been out for more than two years."

He said "Black Friday" portrayed the mindset of one of the 1993 bombers before the attacks and his coming to terms with the scale of what he had done afterwards.

"Experimental cinema is not being encouraged and the industry is not used to dealing with anything new."

Kashyap said his first film "Paanch" also ran into trouble with the censors for its graphic violence.

Another film "The Rising," an account of an 1857 revolt against India's colonial rulers starring Aamir Khan, has been blasted by some critics and academics and has ended up in court after descendants of real-life hero Mangal Pandey objected.

FRUSTRATION FOR DIRECTORS

Mango director Irfan Ajeeb said the problems faced by "Black Friday" and other Indian films were particularly frustrating for directors trying to shed the "Bollywood" stereotype of colorful yet predictable musical extravaganzas.

"We are deliberately showing this side of Indian cinema," he said. "Indian cinema is not only Bollywood. Mango shouldn't shy away from films like this that have a message; at the end of the day it reflects the world we live in."

He has also invited Pakistani screen siren Meera to represent her country at the festival in recognition of her efforts to break down the taboos of South Asian cinema.

Meera was the first Pakistani actress to star in an Indian film, taking advantage of a thaw in relations between the rival nations, but a kissing scene caused uproar among Islamic groups in her native country who issued threats against her.

"The hardliners in Pakistan were after her blood," said Ajeeb. "I think it's brave of an actress to go over to India and do these daring roles. Religion, politics and culture always come into it in South Asia."

Meera shrugged off the outcry.

"Who cares?" she told Reuters. "You see Julia Roberts, Sharon Stone and Angelina Jolie kissing on screen and they are all great actresses. I have to compete with all actresses and I have to perform according to the script.

"In Pakistan, girls have very limited thinking. I have moved internationally into India and my destiny is Hollywood."

- REUTERS