Experimenta India: Om Dar-B-Dar

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Experimenta India: Om Dar-B-Dar

At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90028

Kamal Swaroop's Legendary 1988 Experimental Feature!

Also, don't miss our two follow-up shows of Indian experimental cinema, with filmmakers/curators Shai Heredia and Shumona Goel in person from India!

-Monday, June 26, 8:00pm @ Echo Park Film Center. 

http://www.lafilmforum.org/schedule/summer-2017/experimenta-india-films-from-the-indian-avant-garde-program-1/

-Wednesday, June 28, 7:30pm @ UCLA Film & Television Archive, Billy Wilder Theater, UCLA Hammer Museum (co-presented with UCLA Film & Television Archive)

http://www.lafilmforum.org/schedule/summer-2017/experimenta-india-films-from-the-indian-avant-garde-2/

Los Angeles Filmforum is proud to host an extremely rare screening of the legendary 1988 Indian experimental feature by Kamal Swaroop, OM DAR-B-DAR, an unclassifiable, genre-mashing, phantasmagorical satire that New Delhi Film Society called a “non-linear assembly of images and audio scraps from Hindi movie songs, radio jingles and advertisements [which] combine to produce a one-of-its-kind cinematic experience.”

“Set in the picturesque town of Ajmer, Rajasthan, Kamal Swaroop’s film is a cult classic with feminist overtones and a colorful cast of characters including a young boy who can hold his breath, a runaway Bollywood actress with a shady past, a merchant who believes he can shit diamonds and a gang of terrorist tadpoles. Touted as 'the great Indian LSD trip,' the film premiered to rave reviews at the Berlin Film Festival in 1988, and has since then achieved mythological status in India, influencing a whole generation of filmmakers. Swaroop draws irreverently from mythology, politics, philosophy and popular culture to create a genre-defying film that one critic hailed as 'the antithesis to what is globally considered Indian cinema.'” (San Francisco Cinematheque)

This screening is the first in a series of three different programs focusing on the Indian avant-garde, curated by our guests Shai Heredia and Shumona Goel. Despite a long and internationally celebrated cinematic tradition, the Indian avant-garde is much lesser known to American audiences than the many canonical works of Indian feature filmmaking.  With generous support from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, Filmforum has invited Shai Heredia and Shumona Goel to present their own acclaimed works along with a specially curated selection of short films that will attempt an abbreviated  survey of India’s experimental cinematic landscape.  Their joint visit to Los Angeles to share and discuss their and other artists’ work is an incredibly rare opportunity not to be missed!

Kamal Swaroop was born in Kashmir. His father was a teacher and palmist and mother, a homemaker. The family moved to Ajmer, where he graduated in biology before moving to Pune to study film direction. He had a brief stint at ISRO, where he used Russian fairytales to teach science to kids, and then took filmmaking classes in a remote village in Maharashtra.

In 1974 he graduated from the Film and Television Institute, having received international acclai mfor his student work. He assisted the director Richard Attenborough in the filming of Gandhi (1982), in addition to continuing to make documentary as well as feature films. He is currently working on a full-length documentary titled The Battle of Benaras, produced by Medient.

Famously banned at the time of its original completion, his legendary film Om-Dar-B-Dar (1988) is considered his master work.

Tickets: $10 general admission; $6 seniors; free for Filmforum members and students.
Tickets available in advance at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3010793 or at the door.

For more event information: www.lafilmforum.org, or 323-377-7238