Fast forward several years later and I can now happily recommend this film and a place for you to watch it. Republic of Brown is proud to bring you Sooni Taraporevala’s directoral debut, LITTLE ZIZOU now on HULU.

Check out our complete review below the movie. You’ll be tempted to press play.

Geetanjali

Sooni Taraporevala’s screenwriting credits include SALAAM BOMBAY, THE NAMESAKE, MISSISSIPPI MASALA and SUCH A LONG JOURNEY amongst a formidable list of others. Taraporevala’s directorial debut LITTLE ZIZOU has been likened to ‘Almodovar does Bombay’. Her photography exhibition “PARSIS” has toured Harvard and is now showing at Chemould Prescott, one of the maximum city’s most respected galleries. A listing of her ongoing accomplishments would require more than the space of this review – suffice it to say, Sooni Taraporevala is the quintessential renaissance woman. And the best part of it all is that she is not even trying – in fact, upon the slightest engagement with the laid-back, South Bombay film-maker, it is clear to see she’s just having a great time doing what she loves.

LITTLE ZIZOU is the poignant story of a boy who dreams of meeting his idol Zinedine Zidane. LITTLE ZIZOU is also a tale of broken families braving through on love and good intentions. And LITTLE ZIZOU is a film about the old Parsi community, in a crumbling, beloved city that was called Bombay. It is this multiplicity of narratives that compelled the writer to become director.

From Taraporevala, “I started with the script after I returned from the NAMESAKE shoot in Calcutta. And the nature of the script was such that I felt only I could direct it. It follows no rules of screenwriting. Besides feeling like I knew the characters and story and milieu better than anybody else would, I also felt somebody else might want to cut the multiple story strands and only focus on one – like the father-son conflict for example. So to preserve my whacky vision I plucked up the courage and the confidence to direct at the ripe old age of 50!”

The comparison to Pedro Almodovar’s films holds. As with the Spanish director’s incredible paeans to the lunatic fringe of his Madrid, LITTLE ZIZOU is a labor of love depicting an older, warmer, funnier, and gentler way of life that Mumbai’s bender into modernity has nearly wiped out. Taraporevala’s film, amongst a handful in the recent past, is finally also a little gem to fill the gaping lacuna of Bollywood’s own glittering bender into spontaneously combustible, reality-suspended, supernova. With LITTLE ZIZOU we see a little of the real, the visceral, the bougainvillea-spilling-moss-grown-stone-walls and mundane uniqueness of life in a Parsi neighborhood – albeit steeped in riotously comical dogma.

That is exactly the point the old-school bohemian filmmaker intends and achieves. “The back story is that a lot was going on in the world with religious fundamentalism, and I wanted to address that within my own community. And I wanted to do it with humor. Once I began writing however, the polemic receded to the background as the characters took over. So yes it’s a very local tale but hopefully also addresses a more universal issue.” says Taraporevala.

When a film translates across cultures and boundaries, as Almodovar’s do, they say “it’s got legs” – LITTLE ZIZOU has got itself a nice set of gams. This is a film, it seems, that was not in a rush either to be made, released, seen or ‘return on its roi’ – rather, Sooni Taraporevala is a filmmaker on a languid slow-burn to her craft, and LITTLE ZIZOU bound for Almodovar-esque cult-status when it’s legs have carried it across to cinema-lovers around the world.

Review by Deepti Datt

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There are times in life where you just have to put your head down and get it done. Your focus is singular and you’re working towards a goal.

You’re studying for the Bar or MCATS, mixing your DJ set for the evening’s show, trying to ship your product out the door. You’re striving for something you really want, something that your heart desires and you have to give it your all. Your friends will understand.

The last several months, we’ve been striving towards something we really want: to bring South Asian independent films to you and to the Hulu/Youtube/Netflix streaming, film watching audience of the world.

We’ve got a lot going on that we’ll share in the coming weeks, but you can get a taste of what we’re doing with a first look at Republic of Brown’s YouTube channel featuring the award winnning film AMU by director Shonali Bose.

AMU premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival and won India’s
National Film Award for Best Feature Film in English. If you haven’t seen it, you must and now you can, with ease – this weekend even.

The New York Times review calls the film an “ambitious debut feature by Shonali Bose”. AMU  “wears its political heart on its sleeve and is unafraid to tackle big topics: identity, history, truth, injustice.”

We agree with actor Aamir Khan and think now more than ever that AMU is “a bold and heartrending film, extremely well made and deeply moving. It’s an important film as it is very relevant to our times.”

Wondered where we’ve been?

Now you know.

Check out the trailer below. Watch the entire film here.

More films coming to you soon. Have film loving friends? Send them this story and make their day.

The post Where on Earth is RoB? appeared first on Republic of Brown.

Riz Ahmed photograph courtesy of Interview Magazine

Freida Pinto has captured the limelight lately with appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Access Hollywood for her new film TRISHNA by director Michael Winterbottom, opening today in theaters. But, it’s the quiet and seductive Riz Ahmed playing Jay, the son of a wealthy hotelier, who steals the screen with his thoughtfully delivered performance.

TRISHNA, Winterbottom’s third adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel (Tess of the d’Urbervilles), debuted at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and is set in modern day Rajasthan. Shot in Jaipur and Mumbai, TRISHNA is a heartbreaking tale of a young woman whose life becomes complicated due to fate and love. Ahmed (Four Lions, Britz, Shifty, The Road To Guantanamo) is a British-Pakistani who portrays a successful businessman who travels to India to tend to his affairs when he falls in love with Trishna.

Beautifully shot and acted with subtle intensity by both Pinto and Ahmed, TRISHNA will surprise and move you.

Take a look at the steamy trailer and read Ahmed’s interview below.

Interview courtesy of Buzzine

Freida Pinto may have a knack for starring in British films (i.e. Slumdog Millionaire) or making waves at major film festivals (i.e. Toronto International Film Festival or Cannes), but Wembley-based actor and rapper Rizwan “Riz” Ahmed (also known as Riz MC), is heading into uncharted waters starring in his first-ever romantic lead in Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna.

Preparing for the film’s release July 12th,  Mr. Ahmed talks about how he joined the production and shared his thoughts on taking on the male lead opposite Ms. Pinto in the Revolution Films production of Trishna.

Q: How did you get involved in the project? We know you’ve worked with Michael before, take us through the process and tell us why you wanted to be a part of it?

RA: Michael randomly got in touch and invited me for lunch and a catch up and told me he had adapted Tess of the D’Urbervilles and that he wanted to set it in modern India, crossing classes and cultures. In his usual informal relaxed way, he offered me the role and I said yes of course!

Q: Who is Jay? What sort of background does he come from? What motivates him? Is his privilege and lack of ‘hunger’ his curse?

RA: He’s the youngest son of a rich Indian businessman. He’s in his mid-20s and he hasn’t managed to step out of his father’s shadow and really make his own way or make a success of his life on his own terms. He suffers from the lost rich kid syndrome. He’s on this trip to India from Britain with his friends as a last kind of blow out before he stays on in India to run some of his father’s newly acquired hotels in Rajasthan. He’s frustrated because he has to slot into that role rather than have his own projects and that both haunts and drives him as a character and ultimately the project he finds and latches onto is Trishna herself. He seeks her out and tries to develop her, to satisfy his own needs and make something his own. In some ways you could say his privilege is a curse in the sense that he’s got a lot to live up to. But in other ways, he does try to break away in his own direction when he goes to Bombay. He’s only able to do that and have that financial independence because of his wealth

Q: Does he really fall in love with Trishna?

RA: Yes, but I guess we’ve been talking from the point of view of the macro themes and where he’s coming from means there’s a tragic outcome to the relationship. But, on a personal level, there is something there and he’s completely bewitched by Trishna. She represents the ideal of an innocent woman for him – the virgin maid and it is a kind of love. When they’re in Bombay they are in love, but the limitations in the relationship come from the gap between them being so vast. There’s only so much they can talk about – their worldviews only overlap to a certain extent. At the point where they’re talking about the abortion that’s something that really frustrates Jay, because Trishna didn’t make her own mind up about that and she kept it from him. I guess honor trumps honestly and openness for Trishna. There is love between them but as with every relationship, what makes up that love is lots of different things. Maybe for Jay at the beginning, he almost over-idealizes her, he sees her as a way of re-connecting with his ethnic background and to reconnect with something pure and innocent and something that’s his own. The limitations of all those things in the relationship start emerging and he feels he’s failed in his own life.

Q: What was it like working with Freida?

RA: A lot of fun – she’s a very cool girl. I think she’s an incredibly instinctive and natural actress. She’s very generous and there’s minimal fuss with her. Working with her is one of the easiest processes because she’s incredibly self-sufficient. She’s generous about giving you space and time to develop your character. For me it’s ideal to work with someone like that, particularly when you’re working with Michael and the process is one where things change and evolve and everything’s very flexible. Michael wants you to be natural and that creates a really nice atmosphere on set.

Q: Did you read Tess of the D’Urbervilles before embarking on this film?

RA: After Michael told me about the film, that was when I read the book but I hadn’t read it previous to that. At first I thought it was kind of daunting to try and combine two great characters from literature but what became clear was that it wasn’t going to be a literal adaptation of Hardy’s novel. Angel’s love for Tess is pure whilst Alec’s is a more selfish love. In the novel they’re never really on the scene at the same time so that meant we could take on the spirit or psychology of one character and then at different stages in the story, introduce the other. To begin with, Jay idealizes Trishna in the same way that Angel idealizes Tess. He sees her as a pure woman and views the experience as a return to a natural way and all that is good and pure. When Jay is at the hotel with his friends, he spots this girl from the village and this real obsessive but full-blooded love emerges and at this point we see Angel’s spirit of his affection for her, but what we start to get is a gradual decline into Alec. Having a novel to base the characters and ideas on gives you a rich armory for you to draw on. If we’d have been too faithful to the novel, we’d have all gone mad!

Q: There are strong similarities between Hardy’s England and what’s happening in India right now. Can we explore that?

RA: Yes, that’s a very interesting thing to draw on. India is changing at breakneck speed with modernization, industrialization and mass migration from the countryside into more urban centers and we explore how the old world and new world are rubbing up against each other. The idea of morality is very pertinent because it’s very important to point out that some western audiences may find themselves slightly confused as to why Trishna feels embarrassed about sleeping with Jay and why she feels she needs to run away and why she feels mortified at having had the abortion. This is all a big deal for her. The issue is about traditional morality and that’s what it’s like in large swathes of the world to this day, where sex before marriage and having children out of wedlock is still a huge deal and that shame can destroy a family in terms of their public standing. Maybe people need to realize that’s a reality when they’re watching the film.

Q: You filmed in India with a small crew, on real locations and there was a lot of improvisation. What were the challenges and what were the joys of that?

RA: Working with Michael, there’s always a very small crew, it’s a very intimate and very informal experience. Michael never calls action or cut. It’s a very relaxed, gentle, natural process in term of the atmosphere created for the actors. For the production crew I guess it’s not so relaxed – it’s crazy that’s because there’s so much that’s being achieved and Michael has very high standards and he’s a real stickler for authenticity. The burden of that kind of pressure probably falls on the production but for the actors it’s a really unique experience. There’s no right or wrong – you just have to embrace the fact that you don’t know what the hell’s going happen because there isn’t really a script and you’ve got a very basic idea and you just jump into it and that’s the whole nature of improvising and the nature of working with Michael.

Q: What was it like taking on your first romantic lead?

RA: I guess I’d never really thought about it being a romantic lead. It’s a romantic story but also a tragedy and a drama. From my point of view I try to make the characters I play as complicated for myself as possible so I don’t have to have a very clear grip on who they are day-to-day on set, so you get a fuller picture of them at the end of the film. That’s also part of how it is working with Michael – not having a rigid, fixed view of the characters. We had a lot of long conversations and you can build up this very intricate back story to the character – what books he might read, what music he’d like to listen to, how growing up was for him and you concoct this back story but in terms of how the character would be at the end of the journey you can’t really control that kind of thing. So, I guess that’s a very long way of saying I never really thought of it as a romantic lead!

See Riz Ahmed in TRISHNA opening today in theaters. You’ll also be seeing more of Riz Ahmed in Mira Nair’s upcoming film adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST.

He’s definitely one to watch.

The post The Man Who Seduced Freida Pinto appeared first on Republic of Brown.

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Freida Pinto will be present for a post movie Q and A.

Seats are limited. To RSVP you need to:

1) Tell us in the comments to the right why you want to see the film

2) Be able to show up 40 minutes before the screening this Sunday evening at 7pm at the Pacific Design Center.

The first 15 people to respond by this Saturday at midnight will receive two tickets.

About TRISHNA

Based on Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the D’Ubervilles, master filmmaker Michael Winterbottom’s newest film stars Frieda Pinto who soars as Trishna in her most revealing performance yet.

Trishna lives with her family in a village in Rajasthan, India’s largest state. As the eldest daughter, she works in a nearby resort to help pay the bills. Jay (Riz Ahmed, FOUR LIONS) is the wealthy son of a property developer. When he takes up managing a resort at his father’s request, he meets Trishna at a dance and their fates cross. Jay finds every opportunity to win Trishna’s affection and she accepts his efforts with shy curiosity. But when the two move to Mumbai and become a couple, Jay’s deep family bond threaten the young lovers’ bliss.

Shot with Winterbottom’s agile camera, TRISHNA is a powerful look at the tension between ancient privilege and modern equality, between codes of urban and rural life and ultimately a hymn to both the glory and the tragedy that comes with beauty in all forms.

The film opens to the general public on Friday July 13 at The Landmark in West LA.

Check out the trailer for TRISHNA

The post RoB Invites You to Join Freida Pinto for a Special Screening of Trishna appeared first on Republic of Brown.

Back by popular demand – It’s our yearly South Asians in Media, Marketing and Digital networking event.

It’s your chance to meet new colleagues and catch up with old friends on a gorgeous LA summer night.

This year we’re excited to host the LA book launch for Rohit Bhargava’s celebrated new release “Likeonomics” and have Ogilvy as a sponsor.

Details

Who: Media, Marketing and Digital Professionals

Where: W hotel Westwood

When: 6:30-9:30, Friday June 29th

RSVP Required

RSVP here by Thursday, June 28th. If you’re not on facebook, you can email your rsvp to indocool@republicofbrown.com

See you soon and feel free to invite your colleagues and friends in the media, marketing and digital business. Remember your business cards.

Thanks! And if we haven’t met before, please say hello at the event.

Geetanjali (here’s what inspires me)

Get an advance look at “Likeonomics” right here.

See our pictures from last year.

The post RoB’s South Asians in Media, Marketing and Digital Networking Event with Special Guest Rohit Bhargava, author of Likeonomics appeared first on Republic of Brown.

You’re on camera. Doing your thing in the internet age (read Youtube).

You give it your all for your fans and hope that your message will be appreciated.

Often it is. Sometimes it isn’t. But you don’t care because you have the courage of your convictions and the power of positive thinking.

You do if you’re Lilly Singh AKA Superwoman. With close to 10 million views and
55,000 subscribers, Singh is making her Youtube mark.

Part comedian, part motivational speaker, fully fierce – Singh seeks to entertain and uplift. She only begain her Youtube journey a year and a half ago. After a period of depression, Singh says, that she just decided one day to snap out of it – and she did, with a vengance and a Youtube channel. Now she seeks to help other people feel good through her semi-weekly videos and her event speaking.

With a psychology degree under her belt, Lilly makes sure people feel inspired. Correction, Lilly speaks from the heart and if you as viewers feel a connection, then more power to the collective you.

Born in Scarborough, Ontario, Lilly lives with her parents (her Mom’s her best friend) and will not do anyting that she cannot tell her mother about. She uses this philosophy and her spirituality as her guiding force – and her shield against the haters that sometimes show up after video posts.

Mostly Lilly gets a whole lot of love. She has dialed in the formula as Superwoman to make that intangible connection with her audience. She now boasts a vibrant fan following on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.

So how did a Punjabi girl from Scarborough go from being a Psych major to a fulll time Youtube star? It takes guts, family support and the willingness to keep trying. Lilly’s advice to those considering putting themselves out there: “You need thick skin and you need believe in and love what you do more than you are afraid. It doesn’t matter what people say.”

We say, keep on doing your thing Superwoman. And in your words, we wish you “One Love”.

Check out her Youtube page right here.
You’ve likely seen her most popular video ‘Sh*t Punjabi Mother’s Say” with over 1.2 million views. Check it out right here. Superwoman on Facebook

The post A (Youtube) Star is Born appeared first on Republic of Brown.

A conversation with Rohit Bhargava may just shift the way you do business. You’ll likely come away wanting to be nicer. Maybe even smile a bit more with clients and colleagues. Bhargava, a marketing expert and Senior Vice President, Global Strategy & Planning at Ogilvy, helps companies bring humanity back to their business. Bhargava has a new book out – Likeonomics - all about the real secret of success. You can buy or get a nice long excerpt of the book right here.

Check out Rohit Bhargava’s Tedx talk.

We’re excited to announce that Republic of Brown will be hosting Rohit Bhargava’s LA book launch along with our South Asians in media and marketing networking event on June 29th. You have plenty of time to practice your smile. Save the date and pass it on! Details coming soon.

Listen Up Party People

We’ve told you about Gingger Shanker before. She of the “Double Violin, Rocking Film score and Mos Def” fame. She’s back and working on a new album. You can hear tracks on her facebook page. And if you’re in LA on June 26th, she plays at the Largo. Get your tickets right here.

A Paperback for Your Summer Road Trip

We loved this book when we told you about it last year. “Potent, lush and sensual, The Girl in the Garden is a dark, grown-up fairy tale that will enchant and resonate long after the last page has been read.”  Author Kamala Nair is just back from Italy where her book spent 3 weeks on the best seller list.

The Girl in the Garden is available in paperback June 12th, just in time for summer. You can slip it into your beach bag (and you should) and lose yourself surf side.

Kamala wrote us an exclusive piece about the journey of her first novel. It’s a touching and real look at what goes into a passion project, and how to birth something and let it go. Read her very personal essay here.

The post The Real Like Button, a Summer Paperback and Music for Your Ears appeared first on Republic of Brown.

 Written by Kamala Nair:

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “I was with book, as a woman is with child.” His words capture the experience of publishing my first novel. For many years before I even began writing The Girl in the Garden, it had been gestating within me. During childhood trips to India the seeds were planted, and nourished over the years as I fell in love with literature, reading and re-reading works like The Secret Garden, Wuthering Heights, and Rebecca.

My immigrant parents regularly took my sister and me to visit our extended family in India, and I recall those long, scorching summers with intense clarity. I used to feel at once both intimately tied to the people and surroundings, and like a fish out of water. The tiny village in Kerala where my father grew up became a place of myth in my imagination: the lush jungles and flowers, the strange birds and animals, and the customs and rituals I longed to understand. I imagined myself as a modern-day Mary Lennox, the heroine of The Secret Garden, but in reverse, an Indian girl leaving her home in the West for the exotic and bewildering land of her roots.

I moved to New York in my early twenties with a few dollars in my bank account, and a few chapters of a novel. Shortly after I arrived, I landed a job as an assistant to the editor-in-chief of a major magazine, a job that ultimately did not live up to my glamorous and naïve expectations. Some days I felt lucky to be in my position, other days I wondered how I ever could have deluded myself into thinking I could find a place here in this ruthless city. Every morning I rose just after dawn and sat at my desk, writing from that enchanted place just between sleep and consciousness, until my bedroom was filled with sunlight. I spent long hours at the office, then went out with my friends to enjoy the city I had made my home. It was a grueling process, sometimes trying, sometimes exhilarating.

The Girl in the Garden was not a business venture or a job, it was a project of pure passion, a quest upon whose outcome my core sense of identity depended. I sometimes felt, on monotonous days spent photocopying and fetching coffee for my boss, or as I stood crammed in a crowded subway car with my cheek crushed against the glass, that if I didn’t have my book, I wouldn’t know who I was. My sentiments may have been extreme, but they were also necessary. That flickering filament of hope in my art and in myself, that confidence in the face of the doubts and disappointments of the world around me, allowed me to continue.

That sense of urgency carried me through the challenges of the process, from breaking the news to my parents that I was turning down admission to law school in order to be a writer, to completing the book, to finding a literary agent, to selling it to a publisher, to stepping out of my comfort zone to promote it.

The Girl in the Garden has taken me on a wondrous adventure, spiriting me away not only from my magazine jobs, but from a life where my most creative and exciting moments happened in secret, stolen moments, in the mornings while the rest of the city slept. For a long time, only my closest friends and family knew that I was writing a book. When it was published, acquaintances and strangers suddenly got in touch to say they had read a review, or seen it on a bookstore shelf. Suddenly people knew me as a writer, an identity I had yearned to inhabit since childhood. Over the last year, I have spoken on panels, signed piles and piles of books, and learned how to suppress the knocking of my knees as I stand at a podium reading my work aloud to an audience. Most recently I sat in a garden in Milan, Italy, speaking to journalists about the Italian translation of my book, which is called Una Casa di Petali Rossi, and has, to my unexpected delight, enjoyed three weeks on the Italian bestseller list.

I am proud of this past year, but I am also afraid of what lies ahead. Afraid of my second book. Afraid of starting over from scratch, and of fully committing myself to this new story and its cast of characters, who will be replacing Rakhee, Amma, Krishna, and all the other figures from my first novel who I have lived with and loved for so long.

The paperback version of The Girl in the Garden is out on June 12th and with its release, I feel the bittersweet emotion that accompanies the closing of one door, and the opening of another. This is the final stage of the publishing process, the equivalent of sending your child off to college. As I say goodbye to my story’s eleven-year-old heroine, Rakhee, and immerse myself entirely in my second book, a historical novel that I have spent the last year researching, I realize I’m really an adult now. This is no longer a secret passion, but my job.

Last week a box was delivered to my apartment. The striking image of two white peacocks emerged from within the folds of bubble wrap, and as I picked up the pristine book and held it in my hands, my eyes filled with tears.

I clung to the book, letting my fingertips slide across the smooth cover, this tangible thing into which I poured all of myself, my childhood innocence, the confusion of adolescence, and all the tumultuous hopes, missteps, fears, and loves of my early adulthood. I held on tightly for a few minutes, and then, at last, I let go. I slid it into an empty space in my bookshelf, opened up the document called “Novel 2” on my laptop, and threw myself without any further hesitation into the frightening and thrilling unknown of my future.

You can read an excerpt of Girl in the Garden here.

The post From Conception to Paperback – the Personal Story of a First Novel. appeared first on Republic of Brown.