Tuesday, May 2, 6.00 pm. Theater 2, Village East, NYC.

A Death in the Gunj
(A Tribute to Late Om Puri)
2016 | India | 104 mins | Hindi (w/ English subtitles)
Directed by - Konkana Sensharma
Cast - Vikrant Massey, Ranvir Shorey, Kalki Koechlin, Tillotama Shome, Gulshan Devaiah, Jim Sarbh, Tanuja Mukherjee, Om Puri, & Arya Sharma

Post-screening discussion w/Director Konkona Sen Sharma

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XliKkuxa_nA

Synopsis: Set in 1979, A Death in the Gunj is a coming of age story, about a shy student Shyamal Chatterjee. He uses a family road trip to McCluskiegunj, an old Anglo-Indian town, as an escape from his failed semester. At the outset, the makings of a perfect family holiday are in place but something is amiss. In the week that follows, Shutu's quiet unraveling is overlooked by the family revelers, until the holiday ends with an implosion.

About the Director: Konkona Sensharma is an award-winning actor from India. A Death in the Gunj is her first feature film as writer and director. She is the daughter of Aparna Sen, an award winning filmmaker herself, and granddaughter of Chidananda Dasgupta, a film historian and critic and one of the co-founders of the Calcutta Film Society along with Satyajit Ray. Beginning her acting career at the age of 4, Konkona has acted in over 40 films in Hindi, Bengali and English. She has been felicitated with two National Awards and several industry awards. Konkona Sensharma debuted as a director in 2006 at the Kala Ghoda Film Festival in Mumbai in 2006 with her short film Naamkoron. The script for A Death in the Gunj was one of the 9 scripts shortlisted by the National Film Development Corporation of India, for their Script Lab and was mentored by Marten Rabarts (Creative director). Konkona was invited to be part of the jury at the Barcelona Film Festival in 2006. In 2013, she also served on the jury of the 15th Mumbai Film Festival. At the Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture in Melbourne, Konkona gave a lecture on Arthouse vs. Mainstream. The lecture was organized in partnership with the Indian Film Festival (2014).

Late Om Puri
Om Puri (18 October 1950 – 6 January 2017) was an Indian actor who appeared in mainstream commercial Indian films, as well as independent and art films. He is best-known for his author-backed roles in films like Aakrosh (1980), Arohan (1982) and television films like Sadgati (1981) and Tamas (1987) and also light-hearted roles in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) and Chachi 420 (1997). He had various collaborations with director Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani. Puri also appeared in non-Indian productions in the United States, Britain and Pakistan. Puri was awarded Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India, in 1990; and in 2004, was made an honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

About the Director: Ahmed worked as a professional actor in Karachi during the early-to-mid nineties, performing lead roles in several major stage and television productions in Pakistan. In 2008, he co-founded the ‘Kinky Fish Theatre Company’ in London, England and played Prospero in an Artaudian production of the Tempest which ran commercially for 3 nights at London’s Candid Arts Centre in 2009. He left England for Pakistan that year, but the Kinky Fish is still performing.

Ahmed later started Cinema Pure in Karachi, in 2013, as an independent platform for Pakistani film professionals to come together from time to time, as a collective, to work on projects that are not commercially motivated. The platform aims to (1) demonstrate that strong cinema can be produced on a limited budget, and (2) to explore the human experience with a focus on the narrative-power of light, movement and sound in the frame, rather than on expensive film technology. Mailay (Riff-Raff) is the second film made under the Cinema Pure banner.

Synopsis: OM is a code for male Amateur Radio / Ham operators. OM: OLD MAN explores the enclosed world of VU2JN, an elderly Ham from South India, set against the sights and sounds of an election campaign.

OM: Old Man is about passion, achievement, memories and loss. A restrained portraiture of a teacher and one of the senior most hams in India and a home-brew ham at that, OM is also a salutation to a youthful passion for an old form of technology that keeps the old as much as the young engaged with the world.

About the Directors:

Synopsis: Varanasi, India is one of the holiest cities, located in the northeastern part of the country. People from all over India, even the world, travel to Varanasi to bathe in the Ganges River to wash away their sins and purify their souls. Along the river embankment are boatmen who row tourists up and down the Ganges during Dev Diwali, a festival celebrated 15 days after the national holiday of Diwali. The boat rides are part of the spiritual experience on this holy day, and the film introduces the audience to the river, this auspicious event, and one particular boatman, whose main source of strength and survival comes from the Ganges.

About the Directors: Indira S. Somani, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Media, Journalism and Film at Howard University, Washington, D.C. Somani studies effects of satellite television on the Indian diaspora, specifically the generation of the Asian Indians who migrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1972, and their media habits. She has been published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, International Communication Research Journal, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and the Asian Journal of Communication. For the fall of 2011, Somani was awarded a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship to study the Western influence of Indian programming in India. Somani is also an award winning independent producer and director of documentaries about how Asian Indians maintain and preserve their cultural identity. Her most recent production is Crossing Lines, a personal essay documentary about her struggle to stay connected to India after the loss of her father. The film has won numerous awards, screened in film festivals nationally and internationally, screened on PBS affiliates, and has also been distributed to more than 100 university libraries in the U.S. through New Day films.