Review: I For India

Leaving India in the 60s to work for the NHS, Yash Pal Suri bought two Super 8 cameras and reel-to-reel recorders. He kept one set of equipment, and left the other with his family. What was intended as a means of contact became a tool for educating, remembering and no small amount of emotional blackmail as the Suris pleaded for their Prodigal Son to return.

 

The material forms the basis of his daughter Sandhya’s first full-length documentary. A study of a family divided and a reminder of Britain’s uneasy passage into multiculturalism, it’s the most interesting home video you’ll ever see.

The next big thing?

 

Keeping up with the next best thing can be an exhausting business. Writers, readers, broadcasters and journalists are ready to crown the new great talents in an effort to look authoritative and influential, fuelled by more than a smidge of desperation. After all, no one wants to be the one who let the latest and greatest slip by without their noticing. What’s left after the hype and frenzy has dissipated is another matter.

On ice

 

It’s probably not all Graydon Carter’s fault, but he’s a fun one to blame. After discovering that he was a secret environmentalist, Carter deftly combined the world’s favourite eco-hero and an indecently cute baby polar bear in an Annie Liebowitz shot cover for Vanity Fair’s latest wheeze, the annual Green Issue. And so, with a little help from Leonardo DiCaprio, Knut went stratospheric. And so, with a new found love for polar bears the, to quote George W Bush, “global warming folks” had their image. Since then polar bears have been perching perilously on ever decreasing chunks of ice – a sign of a world heating up and hearts melting. And where the magazine shoots and news footage went, book covers followed.