Can I get you anything?
Acclaimed folk artist and my good friend Lisa Cain will be giving a free virtual artist talk at the American Visionary Art Museum, the national museum and education center dedicated to intuitive, self-taught artistry, based in Baltimore, MD, to discuss her work featured in AVAM’s current exhibition “Good Sports: The Wisdom and Fun of Fair Play.”
January 23 at 7pm EST. Join me in the audience! RSVP required; sign up here.
An overdue congratulations to my good friend Indira Tiwari on making her first film outside of India. We met by chance in a theatre lobby when she was in Kolkata shooting Suman Mukhopadyay‘s amazing indie film Nazarband and I was completing my Fulbright research in 2019. We quickly became friends.
She was on her way to audition in Mumbai for Serious Men and got the role, a major break for her co-starring alongside Nawaz Sidiqqui, which premiered on Netflix in 2020. I’m looking forward to watching her as the female lead in Cannes Prizewinner Vimukthi Jayasundara’s Turtle’s Gaze on Spying Stars, as covered in Variety, an international collaboration between India, Sri Lanka and France. Go, Indira!
Shuvam’s on vacation in India this month so guest co-host Ishan and I closed out the year by reviewing the Hindi-language film Khel Khel Mein, a hilarious romantic comedy about brutal honesty in the digital age.
Streaming now on Netflix, it’s a perfect film to watch for the holidays with your 13-and-ups.
It’s like The Hangover meets Glass Onion…This group of friends all come together and decide to play a game where everyone’s phones are public . . .You can guess how everything’s going to quickly go horribly wrong, but you can’t. You couldn’t guess. That’s one thing I loved about the movie.
– The Jeff &
ShuvamIshan Show
Dive into our review below. Our blinky Santa hats are widely available in the US but these two are important to us because we bought them on the street in Kolkata (Park Street and New Market) during various trips when we happened to be there in December. We treat them like gold!
The Jeff & Shuvam Show is shot in Philadelphia and produced in Kolkata by award-winning film director and my fellow former Fulbrighter Abhijit Chowdhury and his media production company Concept Cube.
The exciting news this week that the Indian government has partnered with France to create a world-class museum heartened me, because such a museum is long overdue. India’s got plenty of museums and majestic outdoor monuments that function as museums, but nothing on par with the Louvre, the British Museum or the Smithsonian.
My first thought on reading the news in New India Abroad about plans for the Yuga Yugeen Bharat, meaning essentially National Museum of India, is that they’re laying the groundwork for the Kohinoor Diamond to finally return to the region.
One of the UK’s oft-repeated reasons for refusing to return the gem that the British Empire looted from India is that there’s no museum in India secure enough to display it while protecting it from being stolen. I’ve heard this same sentiment expressed by diasporic Indians in the US. While this might be arguably true or just a common misconception, this argument will evaporate with the launch of the Yuga Yugeen Bharat, which is still several years off.
The Kohinoor aside, India has many other historic art and cultural treasures that deserve a first-rate museum, so I’m happy to hear it. I do believe there’s a quiet agenda here, though, to clear a path for cornering the UK into finally returning it.
Given the fighting in India that went on between the British and French Empires in the 18th century, which in many ways mirrored their simultaneous conflicts and proxy wars in North America, I can’t help seeing the fact that France has stepped up to work with India as an old score being settled, the ghost of the French Empire firing a final shot across the bow of the British Empire before the sun sets on both empires forever.
Time will tell regarding the Kohinoor but if I’m right, you heard it here first.
Attention current or former Fulbrighters who have made a film about South Asia: we’ve launched a film festival just for you. Your Fulbright research/teaching award doesn’t have to have been in South Asia for you to submit your film. See full details on the FIIG Film Festival below. Deadline 1/15/25!
