SF Film Festival / Loins of Punjab / Meetup!

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1 week & counting to the ever-popular, always-satisfying, 3rd I-sponsored, SF International South Asian Film Festival –

Like Amardeep, one of my most eagerly anticipated flicks is Loins of Punjab from freshman writer / director Manish Acharya –

2:00 pm, Saturday, November 17th, Castro Theater, San Francisco
Admission: $10
Director: Manish Acharya
Country: India (2007)
Running Time: 88 mins, 35mm, Color

Synopsis & Tickets

I’ve already purchased my tickets online. To keep the good times rolling after the flick, we’ll do a mini-meetup around the corner from the theater at Samovar Tea Lounge in the Castro.

3rd I has the following summary of Loins –

A ruthless philanthropist. A gay bhangra rapper. An over-protected prodigy. A reckless actress. A lovelorn businessman. An entrepreneurial yogi. And a Loin King. Enter the roller-coaster world of seven strangers whose lives collide during a singing contest in a small New Jersey town, in this rip-roaring comedy. Think Monsoon Wedding meets Annie Hall, in a diner in Queens, for a masala omelette.

Manish Acharya’s (1967- ) feature film directorial debut, written mostly at a Starbucks in Manhattan, won Best Feature Film at the 65th First Run Film Festival in New York. Before receiving an MFA in Film Directing from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Manish was the founding member of a successful software company. His short film Partner (2001) won the Carl Lerner Award for a Film with Social Significance. Currently, Manish divides his time between Mumbai and New York.

Manish Vij saw the flick, put up a great review and maintains what’s probably the most authoritative, ongoing collection of Loins web content.

The movie’s trailer is up on YouTube –

A Loins-derived music video featuring the talents of Mutineer Emeritus and Animation-Guru Nina Paley is also available online –

After the flick, any interested folks can join some friends & I at the Samovar Tea Lounge, just a couple blocks around the corner.


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Looking forward to seeing some mutineers in the wild!

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29 thoughts on “SF Film Festival / Loins of Punjab / Meetup!”

  1. Manish is awesome. This brown was an extra in one of his first films, back in 2000. My claim to fame. 🙂

    I missed SALTAF this year, so I missed “Loins of Punjab,” which was the real reason I wanted to go this year. Tell us how it is!

  2. I’ve seen the film and had an extensive discussion w/Manish about it too, at SAIFF. Its entertaining, but there’s no “point” to it as it were.

  3. oh, and unless you’re Indian, or have some knowledge of India or Indian pop culture (like Bollywood films/songs/etc…) you really won’t get any of the jokes.

  4. I watch a lot of indie movies. I am not feeling it from the trailer. A lot of Indian indie movies made in the U.S. have disappointed me. I mean, i enjoyed them 15 years ago when the novelty still existed.

    Maybe I will catch it on video. I wonder if the filmmaker can get it distributed on IFC or Sundance or Starz Cinema.

  5. I was at SALTAF this year but missed Loins of Punjab. Everybody I talked to said it was hilarious and excellent. The same, unfortunately, can’t be said of the second movie of the day, Partition. That flick proved to be rather dull, in my humble opinion.

  6. would’ve loved to have been there…but i’m in SF this weekend, not next.. bummer! maybe they’ll show it in LALA land.. 🙂

  7. The scene: On the UWS in a theatre during SAIFF, right before the lights dim.

    The cast: Me, my mother, my father, and a theatre full of hip, artsy brown people.

    Mama Tamasha, holding the program: Look, they misspelled Lions. Me: No, it’s supposed to be Loins.

    Two minutes later.

    Papa Tamasha: I can’t believe they wrote “Loins” instead of “Lions.” How embarrassing for them. Me: Actually, no, it’s supposed to be like that.

    Sigh.

  8. “Loins of Punjab Presents” is freakin’ hilarious! It should be required watching for all desis.

  9. heh 🙂

    People who don’t know ‘Ajit‘ will not get the Loin reference. Especially, if they’ve not seen Kalicharan. Watch a clip here.

  10. Meanwhile, someone has uploaded (the entire film) Hyderabad Blues on Youtube. This was arguably the only NRI film that I loved. 🙂 Many with his life savings of Rs. 1.7 million. 🙂

  11. oh, and unless you’re Indian, or have some knowledge of India or Indian pop culture (like Bollywood films/songs/etc…) you really won’t get any of the jokes.

    My pasty-white non-Indian non-Indophile friends who saw and loved it will be disappointed to hear that.

  13. Seems funny. However, the *-idol plot movies haven’t really interested me. From the trailer it seems like a re-hash of Duets.

    However I’m still waiting for a desi director to come strong from NYU/Tisch like Spike Lee or Ang Lee’s early work that say something about the culture of their respective ethnic backgrounds.

  14. I really couldn’t get why people found Loins so funny… Anyone who’s seen their fair share of the genre will realise that this film does little but regurgitate plot-points and even jokes from previous “Indian-English” films. This film simply conforms to the stereotypes and often aims for the lowest common denominator. Perhaps the only saving grace is Ajay Naidu as the potty-mouthed, gay Punjabi MC.

  15. I think people find it funny because it’s ‘inside jokes’ humor. A lot of times I find Indian and Jewish small films to have the same flaws. It’s like the intented audience is suppose to be a smaller subset of the people from those backgrounds.

    However this lack of universality also makes projects like this which are suppose to be films seem small.

    Films need scope, a sense of an epic and communicate themes which are universal.

  16. <

    blockquote>will this stuff be intelligible to someone like me who isn’t ‘hooked in’ with the bollywood/banghra cultural axis? YES.

    Films need scope, a sense of an epic and communicate themes which are universal.

    I found the film’s characters, relationships and themes “universal,” as did my other non-desi friends. There may have been a layer of Bollywood-related humor we missed, but we didn’t miss it.

    Ignore the haters.

  17. will this stuff be intelligible to someone like me who isn’t ‘hooked in’ with the bollywood/banghra cultural axis?

    Probably not. You’ll get the general idea, but some jokes will be lost

  18. Anyone who’s seen their fair share of the genre will realise that this film does little but regurgitate plot-points and even jokes from previous “Indian-English” films.

    I remember one such joke – the hundred year old ‘ snacks ‘ pronounced as ‘ snakes ‘ Gujju insider joke. Were there more? But I still think it was a better film than most desi-American films made to date. Some solid acting as well. But then why should the lame desi-American films be a benchmark? Anyways if people here ( and they do ) go hog-wild for the moderately talented Kal Penn and the huckster non-artist DJ Rekha, then they should definitely love this film. Desis’ threshold for getting entertained by fellow desis is disappointingly low. And as for those desis who are really talented, you most probably won’t hear about them here until they have been on the cover of Time.

  19. I found the film’s characters, relationships and themes “universal,” as did my other non-desi friends. There may have been a layer of Bollywood-related humor we missed, but we didn’t miss it. Ignore the haters.

    No hate going on here. This comment was a more general one, and most readily admit to not having seen the movie yet.

    You may want to consider that perhaps my predisposition is a result of having seen majority of the American Desi films which have left me wanting, well more…

    I think we all have incredible stories to be told, they just haven’t yet.

  22. For example, the “You from Calcutta or something?” joke would be completely lost on someone who doesn’t understand India/Indian culture.

  23. I will be missing LOP for Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa in the morning & Rituporno’s Dosar after that. It should be out on DVD soon enough, I am sure. Watching Pyaasa on the big screen on the other hand…

  27. i lived in new york for 3 years and was out of town for EVERY meetup weekend, including the time i was in toronto the week of the ny meetup and then in ny the week after during the toronto meetup. guess i had to move to SF to make it happen! 🙂